Galactic Scourge: Toxic Plasma
by Starry's Light
Summary: (ARC 2) Filloma grew up in a small Unovan town, desiring little more than to be forgotten. But the man who hurt her as a child has not stopped searching, and with her existence as proof, he intends to brainwash the world into his misinformed ideology. Her only hope remains a boy from her past who knows her as "Shay"... short for Shaymin.
1. (ARC 1) The Prowess of Niri

**Hello and welcome! **

**I haven't been as devout of a pokemon fan in the last few years, but I've always adored the Sinnoh and Unova regions. Sinnoh's my biased favorite, but I love N dearly. I thought it'd be a fun homage to write both into a story~ **

**Plus, I haven't been feeling these games since the inauguration of gen 6, and I just want this. I just want this to happen man.**

**There are 4 different Ocs (and N because I love him) in this story who show up in different arcs, but it all comes together in the end (well, to the best of my ability). There will unfortunately be 0 Ash Ketchums, however.**

**Please enjoy!**

ARC I: My Uninvolvement

In which a girl who is entirely uninvolved with the pivotal climax of the enemy gets herself into a rather tricky situation.

Chapter 1: The Prowess of Niri (And Layke Too)

My best friend's arm drapes across my back and settles at my waist in that vaguely couple-y way that confuses everyone around us, including ourselves.

We've kicked off our shoes and sunken into each other's shoulders, the sagging likes of a sand castle. Granules stick to my toes, and if I really wasn't feeling it, I could sift through the sea's waves and rinse myself of them... but I'm so lazy. How much effort would it take to get up? More than I'm willing to exude today.

So I lean against Layke, and I watch my piplup dart through the waters.

"Hey. Niri." Layke shifts against me, murmuring my name, _NEE-ree. _His telltale grin, sharp and pointy, a little stabby looking, has hooked my interest. His brown skin's flushed with an excitement, and his crop of bright blue hair almost but not quite stands on end. "What's Lup thinking right now?"

"I don't freakin know," I mutter. "He's too far away. Probably still mad at me for not getting up. Why?"

Layke hums to himself, bumbling his shoulder into mine. "I'unno. Just... wondering. Hey, if you can hear his thoughts, why don't you _use_ it, like, all the time? That's so unfair. I wanna hear my pokemon's thoughts, maaan..."

"Layke, don't moan so loudly! Sandgem town is so tiny I bet everyone can hear you." I push him, and he flops into the beach sands. "Golly _geez_, dude."

"Well, why _don'_chu use your superpowers for good?" He looks up and asks with the corner of his lip crusted in sand, like a tan mustache. Yuck.

I scowl at him, tossing my waist-length indigo hair. "Lup only has mean thoughts. It's not really a superpower at all. And I only hear water types! Between the both of us, Lup is our sole user." I snort and almost add _you know how useless that is_. Fish. I can speak to fish. Oh my gosh, _freaking magikarps_.

Soon enough, the universe will deem me the literal fish-whisperer, and it's going to be horrible. And it'll all be Layke's fault because he has no default when it comes to sound. Sure, it's because his dad and little brother are deaf, so I should be a little more forgiving, but come on, man. Pull yourself together.

Giggling softly, Layke fingers with a strand of my hair, dividing it into three sections, steadily braiding. His eyes follow his fumbling movements, all jolly and bouncy, and his tongue crests the corner of his mouth. "I know: You just gotta become a water type gym leader. Then? People like me can beat you to a pulp and win free badges." He's so peaceful I have to boop his nose to get him to face me.

"You and your baby turtwig."

A smirk glistens across his face. "One day Turt will be huge, and you'll regret calling him anything but the best."

I break into a laugh and flop down next to him. "Imagine if you accidentally send out your geodude again, and instead of victory you face sheer humiliation!"

"Okay _Niri_ that was _one time_!" he shouts, but he can't stop himself from tying off the braid in my hair. I have to admit he is weirdly skilled at his art, I guess because he's had so much practice on me.

"Geodudette will never geoforget, you _loser_," I remind him, so he turns around and scowls at the sea.

From behind his back he grumbles, "I bet you can only hear water pokemon because you wear a swimsuit instead of undies. You're like, like, _married_ to it."

"Nasty." I swipe at him, and he tumbles over, wastrel scum. Finally standing, I place my feet beside his head. His cerulean hair is littered with sand. "It's because I'm special of course." I sense my old friend shifting around my toes, but I don't bother moving.

"You just said you're _not_, though, that your powers're freakin _use_less, you..." Layke spits granules and sputters around in his throat. "You don't make no _sense_, Niri... unnghh..." But he's too lazy, and he won't get back up. I'd call him a loser again if I didn't relate so hard.

Then there's footsteps and we both go silent fast. Layke, brushing himself off, scrambles to his feet. His ripe violet tee shirt sags around his thin, tall body. While he's distracted, I stick a finger into one of the holes in his jeans and he _swats_ me away, stifling his giggles at the touch with a stone-like scowl.

At the edge of the beach where sand mixes with shrubbery, a young woman gazes upon us. She's stopped entirely, her eyes wide and round, and I can't figure out what she's thinking, just this blank aura of... nothing, like a concrete wall. Her skin is brown and her hair white, and it cuts down her back, curling around her head at a diagonal. I'd say it's the most unusual hair I've ever seen, except my designer magazines of Unovan beauty rob me of my right to judge.

Lup follows my confusion to my feet, where he chirps, hugging my leg with his wholly wet flippers. _Let's kill the girl_.

I frown down upon him, acting in that way I do around strangers that my piplup is annoying and wet and not at all thinking ugly thoughts in my head. _What would we gain out of that_.

_I don't know. I just don't like the way she's looking at you_.

Snorting, I shake my head. _Well thank you for caring._ Then I gently peel him off of my leg and mutter "you silly wet piplup now you're getting me all wet, how could you" like that's what this was about all along.

Lup, his lovable self, asks, _Why did you say that._

The girl is still silent. I share a look with Layke, and he elbows me to go ahead. Of course, me. He can't talk to strangers.

Making my way through the sand dunes, I stand myself in front of the girl. "Uhhh, who are you? Whatcha starin' at us for?" Lup's tiny little webbed feet follow after me, and he grabs at my leg again.

Finally, she starts. "Oh! Ahh—" a flush breaks out over her cheeks, her gaze catching my swimsuit like a freaking feet catches and trips over stone, and an angry scowl wreaks havoc along her lips. "Noth-Nothing..." She folds her arms over her chest, and I catch a weird little tattoo on her tan arm. What is that, a G?

While she's busy being flustered and weird, I lift up my yellow rain slicker from the sands, shake it out half-pathetically, then slide it back on. She is still staring by the time I've covered myself.

"Nothing?" I ask, and she starts again.

"Well—You see, I..!" But she loses it once more. At this point I am tired of her attitude and tempted to let my piplup dance around her feet like a little pecking lunatic.

Then the girl lifts her weird diagonal hair from her shoulders and shouts, "I'm going to beat you up and steal your pokemon!" Out of her sudden tossed pokeball arises a tiny fire chimp—chimchar.

Lup, without a word on my end, sinks the chimchar into the sand with a wad of bubbles.

"Oh, uh..." She watches as her chimchar flops upon the ground, thoroughly not amped with this piplup-flavored ambush. "Hey that's... rrrrh, that's not fair... I have so many better pokemon back at the base..."

Over her mutters, I state, "Well, you didn't bring your better pokemon, did you?"

"N-No..." Frowning at me, continuing to mutter under her breath, the girl returns the chimchar to her pokeball, all the while glaring and frowning. "I didn't mean for this to... Oh, you stupid cute girl!"

I am suddenly aware of my existence. My eyes dip to my hands, then to her. "Uh, what?"

The twitchy young girl sputters all over again. "Never... mind!" Then she manages a few tentative steps away from us and cries over her shoulder, "TEAM GALACTIC WINS THIS STOLEN POKEMON!"

Layke finally has something to say, now that she's no longer in our faces. "Oh hey, that must've been Rowan's other... starter..."

I open and shut my mouth, then growl. "She can't just take that..! She clearly stole it. She said so."

Watching us run her way, twitchy girl shrieks and darts into the trees. "Ah, great, now we've lost her..." I mutter, but Lup leaps past me and into the freaking forest. _If you get lost, you goobery little piplup..._

But Lup is determined, and he will not even stop to wait for me, so I let him go. Layke follows with his overly-expressive brows, and his fingers fumble for the pokeballs strapped about his belt, but he lets his hands drop before he's even put much effort into it. "Dude, I'd help, but all of my pokemon are way slow." And I mean, I can't argue with that. Geodudette and Turt, a rock and a turtle, versus my loser bird.

I lean against my old friend. "What do you think we should do to pass the time?"

"We could train," he sort of offers, "like last time... when you used my geodude because you don't..."

Closing my eyes, I shake my head. "That was not very fun."

"Y-Yeah I... figured." Layke grunts. "When do you plan to, like, get more pokemon? I mean, other than Lup."

"I dunno... I won't be able to talk to them unless they're some sort of fish, so that would be less fun."

"Aw maaaan, I'm Niri and I hate being normal like every other trainer and having to _not _talk to my pookermoonz!"

I roll my eyes, elbowing him. "Hey, you wear a swimsuit every day of your life and maybe you'll gain some of my powers. I warn you, though, Lup is a dirty thing."

Layke starts walking ahead without even saying it, so I blindly stumble after him. While the sun begins to slow and stall behind us, I watch our footprints from the sand fade away. He's so—gangly and thin. And, well, I'm the total opposite. A _full figure_, as Layke would say, or whoever says it, I don't actually know.

As if he hasn't just walked away from the conversation, Layke muses, "I'd rather live like a scavenger in the woods, like with the grass skirt and everything, until I can talk to Turt. I feel like Turt has some very wonderful things to say about all kinds of people and all kinds of things. He is probably the smartest out of Lup and Geodudette combined."

"You know, from what Lup has transcribed to me, you might be right. Or not. I have no idea."

We head north, reaching the homely little pokemon center of Sandgem. Its telltale vermilion roof has been bleached by sunshine over the years, and the tile floors are crusted over and polished in sand, from no-good losers like me who do not shake the granules from between our toes.

I recognize and bypass the fact that I've once again forgotten my shoes by the beach. It comes at a loss to me as to when Layke re-donned his tennis shoes, but once again I am the silly barefooted one. The tiles are cold, and I am marginally embarrassed.

"We could just play checkers until—"

"Yeah." I snort. "Let's play checkers, Layke."

Wedged in the corner of the center's meager bookshelf, there is a patchy box of checkers. It is missing one piece because Layke got so mad when we were kids that he took my king and hid it in the dirt, and to this day we have no idea where the hole is. The pieces _not_ hidden in the dirt have adorable symbols on them: one is standard red poke balls; the other sports some standard blue poke balls. They would be great balls, except nobody put the weird red accents on them. On the other side of the discs, hand-painted pokemon live behind or I guess "in" the ball: there's the three starters, of course; chunky brown bidoof, a smiley ditto, bright green budew, and all sorts of other mons are featured.

It's cute until you're playing with children and they don't _want_ the red side, they want to replace every red pokemon with the blue pokemon that they like more, and before you know it, you're playing a different game entirely: a game that always ends with someone crying.

Layke and I settle at our same table, and Nurse Morrow is watching us through her periphery; she _was_ a Nurse Joy, as in formerly, until her super existential phase. Now her apron has been dyed a nasty black and her hair lies tattered and red about her face. She is the most intimidating person I have ever met and the sole reason I scavenge for berries instead of healing Lup in the center. Maybe that was her goal all along, to incite a revolution of fear.

"Hey. Niri. Stop lookin' at Morrow."

"Whubh—" I flush and meet his gaze.

Giggling, he adds, purposely pitching his voice low, "We all know you have a crush on her~"

I stand up so hard my chair falls over my feet. "YOU! I! NOOOOOOO NO NO NO! I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU CAME UP WITH THAT IDEA, BUT TRULY YOU ARE THE GREATEST OF FAILURES IF THAT IS WHAT YOU THINK OF ME AFTER THIS MANY YEARS."

Once I've pulled my chair up, I make my way back into it; but it is only once I've settled that Nurse Morrow_ slams_ an old textbook from nurse college onto the booth in front of her. "Do not speak so loudly in my center," she utters in her almost-guttural tone.

I wonder if she's regretting her decision. So many years of nurse college to become inducted as a Joy, and then you live off of taxpayers' money for the rest of forever. In a place like Sandgem town, maybe I'd go crazy too.

I shouldn't be asking myself these questions about our hardly-sense-making economy, or I'll end up like her.

My best friend finishes fumbling with the pieces; he's already placed the blue ones in front of me, what a gentleman. Wordlessly he points at the spot where my last ball should be, but is living in the dirt like a seed for the rest of eternity, and we agree silently that I have a disc there. It's more fun to use the invisible one, actually, because Layke forgets where it is, so I was only bitter until I beat him with invisible poke ball powers and he recognized the simple truth that taking another away would merely increase my prowess.

We get pretty far through our match, and I get my invisible disc kinged before the center's doors slide open and a certain angry piplup marches over to us. He climbs up my leg, flops onto the table, and scatters our pieces around our feet like confetti.

I narrow my eyes. _What_. This would be much more annoying if I'd had a good run, but unfortunately for me, Layke remembered the disc's location, and I am a horrible player without that handicap.

He huffs. _I did not catch the girl. I got pretty close until I had the opportunity to trip over a rock that I just couldn't miss. _His bruised foot lags behind him, and I only now notice the careful not-quite-wince that fits his bill like a limp bandage. _She wins... but only for now. I still say we should've killed her._

_Well, she thought I was cute, so I can't say I'm with you._

_That is because you are silly and dumb._

_Thanks, Lup._ I plop him forcefully onto my lap, then fish a plump blue oran berry out of my pocket and pop it into his mouth. He curls up into a sigh and leaves himself be.

I glance over at Layke, sweet Layke, who has already cleaned up the pieces and reset them. "Hey, dude, Lup's back."

He stares upon my piplup like he didn't watch the thing dance our discs off the board. "Oh. Right."

His hand raises to one of the discs, and it hovers, listless.

There's this look in his gaze, his deep blue borderline-violet gaze, when there's something his heart desires. Small and shimmery and hopeful without daring to hope, knowing that it won't happen but yet still asking, still shamelessly asking with the willfulness of a child.

Slowly, mouth agape, I add, "You know, one more game wouldn't hurt." My hand fidgets and twists around the braid, his braid.

And his eyes break like clouds, and they brighten, soften. And he doesn't say a word, but he zones into the game, his eyes keeping careful track of my invisible disc which still has not moved yet.

And that's how I wonder in the pit of my heart if something will ever happen between us.  
Because sometimes he looks at me like that, and it makes it hard to breathe.  
And I wonder, and I wonder, but I just don't know yet.

I really shouldn't be thinking this way. We still haven't found the way to Oreburgh city. Someone told us there's a path from Jubilife, but Layke is deathly terrified of strangers, and Jubilife is, like, every stranger in the universe except in one town. We've been trying to scale the craggy hills and forests that supposedly make a faster route to the first gym, but as of yet we are failures.

And as of yet I'm gonna have to stop thinking the way I'm thinking. There are plenty of cute people—_in my age range unlike that girl—_and there is no reason to tie myself down to this tone-deaf loser boy.

Then there's that light in his eyes, and it's hard to look away—and it's sort of breathtaking.

And Lup tells me I'm losing the game, I've lost the game, but it occurs to me that for once I don't mind. Maybe next time, I'll even let Layke use the blue pieces.


	2. An Elusive Lucaro

**Uhhh... got a lot of interesting comments on the first chapter. Don't worry yo, I have thick skin. If someone tells me that my story is trash because I don't ship Advanceshipping, like, I don't know how else to say this, but I'm sorry that this pairing matters so much to you that you feel the need to let me know I am apparently writing an inferior story.**

**Let me write my inferior story, bub xD**

**To Guest and OMG, thanks for the reviews! I appreciate it lots!**

**Sorry about the surprisingly late update. I'm trying to upload once a week, but unfortunately, due to fun college circumstances, sometimes it doesn't be like that. Let's hope the lucario makes up for it, haha.**

Chapter 2: An Elusive Lucaro

We're up bright and early, packing up our meager encampment from behind the pokemon center, because why would we sleep inside of it. I feel like Nurse Morrow eats people's dreams while they rest, their bodies absolutely powerless in her center of total and utter emo energy—and I sense a chill along my spine when the thought crosses my mind—so, clearly, that is exactly what she does. Maybe she's a horrifying hypno in disguise... waiting for the perfect moment...

_Or a musharna,_ squeaks Lup who for some reason knows about pokemon that not even I know about.

I ask, ever the dull in comparison to this ridiculous bird, _Oh, gee, what's a musharna?_

Lup shrugs, clinging to my leg in that... clingy way of his. _They're like volcanoes, except pink and marshmallow-shaped. They eat dreams, but they also can turn dreams into mist. It makes no sense._ Ah, yes. That sounds like pokemon logic to me.

While I'm standing still, waiting for Layke to brush off the leaves around his head and pull himself to his feet, Lup climbs up me and sits himself down in that weird squishy spot between shoulder blades, his flippers situated at the back of my head. His head, eclipsing the edge of mine, has tilted slightly to watch my best friend struggle better. _I don't know why you just ditch him. Oh wait, because you are a lovestruck loser._

_I am only slightly lovestruck and slightly a loser,_ is all I can manage in response. It's not like he's entirely wrong.

If nothing less, I am his helpful stepping stool, and I double as a lookout point. So he has no reason to shoot at me without reason at this time.

Lup whispers, _What's his deal anyways,_ and I can't see them, but I sure feel his beady piplup eyes gouging the back of my head, judging me through my hair.

Shuffling the leaves out of his shoes, Layke has finished stuffing my sleeping bag into his knapsack—he ditched his own after deciding that he must become one with Turt's nature-family. "Hey, you ready yet or what, Niri?"

"Oh, ha ha ha, how funny." I let my arms sag at my sides. "I should be asking you that. We gonna fall down another mountain today?"

Layke titters, shaking his head while his soft brown cheeks flush. "You know... maybe. It all depends on happenstance."

_Seriously Niri, what is his deal._

I scowl and mutter, _C'mon, Lup, it's personal business. You don't have to be so nosy._

But of course he does, and so his pestering continues, a buzzing in the back of my head.

Talking to pokemon is only cool until it turns out they're just as cool as the rest of us.

"We're gonna be sooooo tough once we scale the way to Oreburgh." Layke's hand brushes by my side when he strides past me, taking the lead. It is definitely not distracting. We head east, towards the sun, only marginally blocking bright-hot sword-shaped rays by the peaks of craggy hills that are supposed to keep us out—and _yet_, for whatever silly reason, it appears we will be in. Somehow, eventually, at least.

He's cute and it's annoying, and I try to distract myself by playing telepathy tic-tac-toe with Lup. It's a game we made up entirely on our own, and it's basically what anyone would expect, but there's no paper and we do it all in our heads. We are both monstrously terrible at it.

_X on the top-left sqare._

Lup scowls. _You can't do that. I already O'd that spot._

_No you—No you didn't._

_Yeah, well, whatever. I think I already won._

_Lup, that is not how you play a game._

He's a sore loser, and that is how most of these sorry games end.

I keep up the pace until my feet inevitably slip and I slam against Layke's back. My goobery best friend plucks me back into place, then tugs my hand securely in his grip. "No falling yet~ We've got a whole day of falling to go, you." His fingers, while longer, are thinner—and he traps me like a snare. His warmth hits me like a punch to the heart.

Rain boots are not the greatest footwear for climbing up cliffs, but they are all that I own, so I guess we are still trying, stubbornly, to make it work. The whole _rain gear _ensemble is practically reeling off of me in putrid waves.  
What can I say? You can't be a pokemon trainer without some weird gimmick. Everyone's seen the Ash Ketchum show: Brock is _girl-crazy. _Cilan is _food master_. Ash is... a little too energetic.

We take our first steps into busted rock, fragments crackling beneath our toes. Layke's hand digs into my skin. I hold as steady as I can, which turns out to be not very steady at all—we shudder, we tighten our grips on one another, we stay. For now.

"C'mon c'mon, it's not gonna take all too long..." He urges us ahead, his eyes dipping back to the northern path, the not-mountain path, the right path, where we're supposed to be; they shy away again. "It's just a whole up-up-and-down, right? Right." His voice has lowered, softened, weak.

A shadow crosses over our narrow, shimmying path, and Layke yelps. "Who's—"

We look up simultaneously, into the figure on the level above us, and stare into the amber gaze of a freaking lucario.

"LUCARIO!" I cry out, shuffling around in my slicker's pockets for a poke ball. It is entirely unlikely for this pokemon of all pokemon to be out in the wild without a trainer—but if this is my chance, then _this is my chance._ I slap a red orb into my hand, letting go of Layke's fingers—my first mistake—before chucking the ball at the jackal's face.

A black-furred fist blocks the ball, and the pokemon's eyes, trained upon me, blaze. Then they falter. "Ah—This is yours, right?"

And then I fall. Then I skid badly, crumpling, slipping, my rain boots making absolutely no resistance and slapping me onto the craggy earth below. A singular bush attempts and fails to catch my fall.

The pain manages a dull throb. Lucky me, I have yet to break a bone or something far more pertinent to my very existence.

As I squirm on dry soil, glaring into the heat of the steadily rising sun, a shadow spreads across me. Layke's brown face squints, attempting to make me out over his own cast shade. "Ah, Niri. You okay there?"

"D-Did you not hear the lucario?" I squeak, and then he turns around.

"Oh, wait. You heard that too? So I... didn't just imagine it?"

Shoot. I bite into my lip. "I-I-I-I guess not."

We're both staring at the lucario, as Layke helps me back up and we awkwardly make our way back onto the rocks, only to realize that the lucario is staring back. "I ahh... I still have your poke ball, human. And may I ask what the two of you are doing, climbing up these rather dangerous cliffs? Are there not signs warding off the traverse of these very cliffs?" His surprisingly human-flavored voice, husky and soft, directs our attention; then he points at a couple signs wedged into the ground just beyond our pathetic attempts. "I do not read very good humanese, but I would presume these are telling you not to take the mountain trail."

Layke swallows, then nods implacably. "Yes yes yes of course. How silly of us." Then he drags at me until I scoot forwards, and he half-pushes me up a scraggly trail in the efface, perhaps made by my scrabbling footwork.

Once we have reached a footing more or less equal with the inexplicable lucario, he utilizes his aura powers to send my poke ball sailing through the air and into my hands. Lup, still miserably tied around my neck, snatches it._ You distract, I throw,_ he offers, but I snort and shake my head—

And then, of course, the lucario meets Lup's gaze with his blazing amber eyes. "Please do not. I have been dodging such paltry throws ever since my early childhood, and I would greatly appreciate it if you would cease. Let me just make this clear now: I won't allow myself to be caught." With his hands—I mean paws—raised and facing us, casting little shadows over our faces, his sleek indigo fur and slim yet powerful body cannot be overlooked.

"How do you speak, Mr. Lucario?" Layke blurts.

I scowl at him and elbow his side; for a second his balance shatters, but he's still got my hand. He utilizes this fact in order to reorient himself.

Mr. Lucario's gaze falls upon us in an uncomfortably hot wave. "It is not entirely... speaking. Well—I mean—I guess it is, in the sense that my voice flows outwards and allows the likes of you to comprehend it. That is... ah, speaking, in the meaning of the word... but... it is my well-trained aura. I have learned how to present myself in such force that the intents of my words transcend my own body and seep into your minds; then these very smart human minds of yours do most of the work, transcribing my message into humanese. Clever, is it not? It does as well help that I have picked up a few phrases, when my aura does not quite do the job I was intending.

"Ah, and—no need to call me... Mister Lucario? No no. Mister Lucario was my father." Layke snorts hard, and I almost push him off the cliff. "My name is Lucaro."

"Luca..." My best friend swallows whatever laughter nearly spews out of him like a freaking idiot-geyser. "Lucaro. That's, uh, that's quite the name."

"A very nice name," I throw in.

Lucaro shoots me an oddly grateful look, his eyes far too emotional and feeling to be anything other than a reflection of the humans he speaks with. Is he not sure he's learned much more than he thinks? "Yes, that is what I thought as well. So many pokemon allow humans to label them, but with a name as fine as my own, I doubt any mere human will ever think to alter it!"

"Ohhhhh my goodness—"

"Laaaayyyke—" I shoot him a warning, squeezing his hand tighter than needed.

He releases a pent-up breath: "Okay okay okay okay okay... whatever you say, Niri..." Then he sags into me.

I roll my eyes. "Gee, thanks, buddy."

Then Lucaro. I face Lucaro. Lucaro, the freaking... talking lucario, who refuses to be caught by my paltry poke ball. "Dude, you... probably have to deal with these sorts of misunderstandings all the time. Why bother with the human world? Why don't you go live somewhere secluded or... something? Like where all the lucarios live?" Iron Island, was it?

Layke chuckles back to life. "Yeah! Like, like that picture book! You know? The one with all the riolus, and the one lucario dad who's super chill and also a terrible parent, and all the kids go on an adventure to _see the world_ and one of them gets caught by a trainer? And the message, it's like, being with a trainer is great because it means being safe in a poke ball and getting to be stronger! And uh, friendship. And... uh... stuff."

He grows quieter the longer Lucaro stares at him.

"Wh-What is this... humanese propaganda?"

And he's silent again. I get to answer for him. "Don't mind Layke. He has no filter on his brain."

Lucaro frowns, his brow scrunching, then very slowly nods. "I see." Then he redirects his attention to me. "You asked, human, why I am here, facing people such as yourselves, when I could be living somewhere sacred and untouched by human hands? That is a very good question. I've thought upon the topic greatly, and I have much to say about..." He draws off. "I suppose this wasn't an invitation to, ah, bore you with my words.

"I used to live with my own kind, yes, but I... lost my way when I was young. I made some idiotic decisions and... ruined my mother's life. I don't know where she is today, just that she must be with a pokemon trainer... somewhere." His words sink into the well of my soul like well-aimed rocks. All I can think is, well, shoot, how did I invite this conversation. "I managed to escape, when the humans found us, but...

"I do not know how much of my home still stands, and I am afraid to go see it once again."

Even Layke is left without words. We share a horrified look.

He's obviously not going to volunteer it, so I step in front of him and ask: "Hey, uh... Lucaro. You really, uh, you're really giving off these nonchalant wanderer vibes. If... you'd like to avoid being caught by other pokemon trainers... would you like to... come... with us? On our journey?"

And the way the light hits his face—dazzling, somber, soft, yet overflowing with an incredible warmth...

"You... would let me, human?"

Layke opens his mouth and I _beat_ him to it. "Yes! Of course! And ah—My name is Niri. You don't have to call me human anymore than we should call you lucario."

Beneath my voice he's muttering "heeeey Niri we _just_ met this weird lucario guy are you sure we should be offering to let him stay with us" but screw him and his inability to do anything. Screw his utterly self-absorbed thought process; clearly this lucario is hurting, and it is in our powers to help him, and, besides, guess who knows how to climb the cliffs: the _lucario_, Layke.

...geez, has he always been this obstinate?

Lucaro... shudders. "I—I would like that greatly, human... ah, I mean Niri." He closes his eyes, relaxing slowly, allowing however many years of lonesome traveling to ease out of him. "Thank you. You... are a trainer, yes? I've been meaning to ask for some time, but how does one become a trainer?"

There is a pause. Layke kind of stares at me out of the edge of his gaze again, while my voice again fills the silence. "It's sort of a self-proclaimed thing, Lucaro."

"Ah... then—I would like to be a trainer as well."

Finally my best friend squeaks something else out of his filter-less mouth. "Y-You're gonna train... pokemon? That's uh, is that wrong or someth—"

Lucaro's face _flashes_ a violent purple. "No! Never! I would like to be a pokemon trainer... who trains the pokemon... that is me!"

"Oh!" I cover my face. Something about the sparkling in his eyes and the way he addresses his chest is... cute? Like, like cute in a pokemon way, except he can speak freaking humanese, so I really can't tell where he stands in the scope of humanity. I am _not_ attracted to the lucario.

Lup _snorts_ from where he stands, now atop my head. _Well thank goodness for that._

_Shut up, buddy._

Lucaro watches our snarl of a conversation with interest. "You have been attempting to climb up these cliffs, yes? I presume to Oreburgh town, where the cliffs generally lead to?" For once, Layke's face alights at the prospect of Lucaro doing something with us. "Here, I can... with my aura, I can try to keep you from falling, or at least from falling very easily." He turns tail—literal tail, his long blue tail wagging but the freaking slightest—as he leads us up a rocky trail of sorts that appears less rocky than its surroundings.

We steadily make our way forward. I manage to move closer to Lucaro, lengthening my gait, and his eyes follow me—then he speaks. His words float upon the clouds before landing upon me.

"Niri... what is the reason for your excursion?"

The little turd he is, Lup shakes to wake himself, gripping my hair with his puny piplup flippers. "I, ahh..." I draw the curtains of indigo that crowd around my head back, and I glare at the strands through my outstretched fingers. "It's a whole... personal thing. Layke just—he gets anxious easily, that's all. It's kind of a, uh, long story."

Lucaro's eyes widen. "Well, we have time." He pauses to flex his paw—his aura catches me as I trip over a rock. "Ah—Wait. That is a human phrase, correct? It means you do not wish to speak on the topic."

"I—yyyeaaaah." The lucario draws back a polite distance, keeping watch over my lagging behind loser of a best friend while I squander what few steps I can manage before my shoes threaten to slip me over the side of the hill and upend me on some poor tree's miserable existence.

As the sun rises, shrouding our backs in sweltering heat, I begin to catch glimpses of metal and structure ahead. The cliff turns and reveals, beyond the efface, the scattered mining town of Oreburgh, intermingled with the outcropping where buildings crouch beneath shade, sootied and smudged with the honest labor of their inhabitants. Crazy to think that a little old stone-age looking place like this hides behind the sprawling metropolis of Jubilife City.

Too bad my best friend is too afraid of people—yet too stubborn to admit it, uh? Could've gotten here a whole lot faster, with a whole lot less rocks in my feet.

I hate the gentleness of his expression, the way his eyes search for me when I turn around, the way his hand encloses my shoulder as he helps me down. A few passerby watch us make the awkward transition from cliff to ground level, and when Lucaro waves, they turn back, muttering all sorts of things beneath their veiled hands.

A kid waves back, and Lucaro's tail wags, slapping against my leg in the scruffiest freaking way that I have to stop myself from reaching over and patting his dumb Lucaro head.

"So ah... now that we have arrived..." Clenching his paws, Lucaro allows the aura so dispel from our sides. His charged gaze meets mine. "What is a pokemon trainer to do?"

"Ah!

I take his side and point out the outcropping towards the back of the town, where a trail dips into the flickering, damp lights of a dark cavern. A helpful little sign cheers: **OREBURGH GYM BELOW! **"We face the gym."

Lucaro stares at me with these wide, unknowing eyes. "Gym..?"

"You know! The... oh, I forget what it stands for. Being a gym leader means you have the honor of facing newbie trainers who wanna get the recognition and fame of a _total winner_."

"Ah... so it's a competitive term."

I shrug. "Yeah, that's fair."

Layke returns to my side, eyeing Lucaro. There are these annoying burrs in his hair from the climb, and I reach over to pluck one out of his head. He makes a squished-up face. "Luca... yeah, uh. Gyms are General User Mastery something something, not completely sure how the letters work out. When you're certified, it means you're the best in some field or another.

"Roark is the cool boy we're lookin' for up here. Apparently he makes you freaking fight in the dark."

I squeak. "Wait, then why are we doing _his_ first?"

"Uhhhh..." My best friend pokes my shoulder. "Because it's the closest to home, and I don't feel like walking all the way back when we get the other badges?"

"_When we—_" I cough. "Oh, yeah, sure sure sure..."

Lucaro's brows raise. "I am appalled that you do not believe within yourself, Niri! Of course you shall win! You have the brave piplup by your side, as well as myself and your friend here cheering for your victory!"

"I—uhhh, yeah, sure thanks..." Flushing behind a hand, I swallow the notion. "Well, don't be disappointed when we lose, that's all."

"Nah, you gotta get your chin up, Niri. It's a _fight..._ in the_ dark.._." Layke's face scrambles to form this twisty little grin. "Like hide-and-seek to the _death_."

So apparently that means we're gonna win?

"Well... sun's still out, so I guess we might as well go for it." Get this over with, and all.

The boys follow me as I make the precarious journey to what could most likely be a very bad end.

_Niri, chill out._

_Oh, not you too, you freaking penguin..._


	3. What's Mine Is Lost

**Alright bubsies, time to get SERIOUS MODE**

**time for BATTLES and also maybe something else that is currently a secret**

**Once again to OMG, thanks for your continued support! It means a lot C:  
Also thanks to AshxMay ROCKS for padding my review count, now I look slightly more popular hahahaha. Keep reviewing and maybe I'll get to 10 one of these days.**

Chapter 3: What's Mine Is Lost

The sunken sensation of darkness gathers amongst us, a shadowy cloak, a nefarious hand clutching beneath our heads, yanking us ever-further into the recesses of a labyrinthine mayhem. I stumble consistently, and eventually just go ahead and grab Lucaro around his slim arm, struggling to keep his own balance rather than giving into my own.

Layke was wrong. There are lanterns strung up in the cavern ceiling, and another decorates our vision with a tantalizing light in frequent enough bursts that I do not fear the bleak darkness. The path slopes painstakingly downward, steadily at first, then faster, faster, to the point where I am one slightly poor decision away from landing on my butt and skidding all the way into the dizzying blackness of the beyond.

As the lights grow sparser and sparser, it is in my gut that perhaps Layke was not entirely wrong. I wish my piplup glowed in the dark; he would be quite useful, if only.

_Oh, is that all I'm good for? _the piplup in question chirrups from his poke ball.

_Well... it's all you would be good for, if you did._ But he doesn't, and that's all there is to it.

He smirks in that weird piplup way of his, his beak turned up and twisted. _So you're saying I am good for nothing. Me, your one and only pokemon._

_I mean, yes._ Then while I'm not paying attention to the ground, I skid and slide, into harrowing black. All that keeps me company are the pinpricks of rocks under my butt, chewing through my skin as I tumble farther. I land on my side when the path finally evens out much later than I would have appreciated.

Lup finds this a perfect moment to add, _I am also good for distracting you enough to ruin your day._

_Oh, shut up._ My entire underside freaking stings. If only I had one hundred band-aids, but I do not even own one. Gritting my teeth, I don't bother to get up and try to wait out the dull waves of seething pain that float in and out of my periphery like my surroundings. _Maybe I'll just die and never have to partake in this stupid mine shaft looking gym._

Footsteps alert me of the presences behind. I hastily pick myself up and stand in such a way that the entire front of my body faces Lucaro when he reaches me. "A-Are you alright, Niri? I would have come down sooner, but I feared... what if I fell, as well, and then I fell atop you? And what if it hurt a great deal?" He draws a paw along his face, his gaze struggling to picture me in the dizzying half-light.

I've gotten used to it. The only reason I can't see is because my eyes are definitely not tearing up from the pain. "No, I'm f-f-fine, just a little uhhh... I'm alright."

"Well that is wonderful!" His paw addresses my shoulder, and for a second I can't shake the feeling that he's actually a human in a lucario's body. "It alleviates my fears, to know that you were largely unscathed!" But he can't be a human... can he? How would that even work? "Niri, what are you looking at? I don't see anything behind us."

"Oh—Uh." I wipe a discreet sleeve to dab my eyes. "Nothing, nothing." Then Layke rounds the bend and gently skids his feet down over to us in the most stupidly perfect way possible, and I seethe. "Oh, it's just Layke. His shadow was bouncing around back there, and I got confused, I guess."

Lucaro moves aside to make room for my stupid best friend, who affectionately punches my shoulder like I did not just skid down the entire downward slope. "Hey Niri! You ready to take on the dude? What was his name... uhhhhhh... do you remember?"

I sputter. "You never told me his name!"

"Well..." He hesitates, covering his mouth with a hand as he thinks. "He's got a name. I'm sure of that much."

"Fantastic. If only we knew it." With that out of the way, I sidestep and allow the other two to move in front of me before I claim the back of the group. The blood is trickling down my legs, and I am doing my very best not to swipe at it every two seconds.

Zubats live in creepy, dank spaces like these, right? They aren't... attracted to blood, right?

As if in aggravation, Lup explodes from his poke ball and addresses my legs with a nasty spew of bubbles, smearing more than cleating the disaster zone, causing an ever more confusing ensemble of red.

"Hey, what's—" Layke zips back to face me. "What's Lup doing out? He should really conserve his energy for the gym leader, you know?"

"I—ohhhh gee... ahh..." The weakest laugh spills out of my mouth, and I fan my hot, blustery face. "Yeah you're definitely right. He's just being an idiot. Lup, you should get back into your poke ball... uh, like right now."

My piplup hisses. _You are a horrible liar._

_It'll dry eventually. Just leave it, dude._

_No thanks or anything, uh? What an ungrateful trainer you are._ As he waddles back over to his ball and a white light engulfs him, transporting him into his little poke home, he continues to prattle. _I decide of my own free will to try and clean up your great mistake, and who gets the blame? Oh, yes, me. Just tell them you're a clumsy fool already, would you? This is getting pathetic._

I pluck his warm poke ball from the ground and glare into it. _Okay, thanks for trying. Now be good. It's too late to tell them. I'll make it too awkward, because, like, why did you hide the fact that you're bleeding out, Niri? Uggghhh._

_Well, hey, at least they care about you._

_I wouldn't be friends with them if they didn't care about me._ I care about myself at least that much, right?

While I'm glaring into the poke ball, Layke's hand brushes by my face. Blush explodes across my cheeks as he tilts my head towards him. "Hey, you okay? Looked like a bad fall, and all."

"I-I-I-I—_FRICK, _uh..."

He glances carefully around me. A wince fills his mouth. "Yeah, that looks bad. Sorry, dude. You gotta take better care of yourself, yeah?"

His hand pats at my head, and with a cheeky grin, he turns around. I don't have much else to do other than follow.

_You're in love._

_Leave me alone, Lup._

We move on, filing into a massive entrance. Rocks line our surroundings in an almost perfectly immaculate barrier, large and smooth, yet grooved and just rough enough to dissuade straying too close to the efface. Once again, I sense a minor explosion in my pocket as Lup erupts from his poke ball and lands in front of me, waggling his flippers outward.

Layke watches, brow furrowing. Then his hands steadily reach for his belt, where he taps the little release buttons on his poke balls, and out come Turt and Geodudette. Lucaro oversees without actually looking our way; a minor storm of sorrow versus truth fights for worth in his gaze.

It's the poke balls his eyes waver over. Sweet Lucaro.

We stand together, searching the dimly-lit stadium for its guardian. I catch the sound of a switch churning, then bars ascend from a hatch I hadn't even noticed across the way, and into our sight strides a man not all that much older than us. I open my mouth to retort; then I scowl and shut it. He's a gym leader for a reason. If I say something stupid, he'll come after me harder than the others.

My best friend, however, does not think so quickly: "Whoa! How old are you anyways?"

The man approaches us, his burgundy hair rippling in the faint light. A hard hat crowns his head, and he knocks his fist against it once; the bulb burns on. We have to squint to face him; Lucaro decides to just close his eyes. "My age is _not_ of your concern." Coughing into a fist, the gym leader searches for a stoic expression, then plasters it across his face. I wince; his eyes sharpen, blistering mauve. "All that matters is my strength, which has gifted me this position as gym leader of Oreburgh City.

"My name is Roark, and"—his voice cracks—"you must face _me_ if you seek the Coal badge!" His cheeks flush, and he drags up the flaps on the sides of his outfit, gray mining slacks.

His boots click against the stones below as he comes nearer; with each step, my heart shudders. Something about the ferocity unleashed within his gaze and the drawn snarl in his lip...

If he's our age, he must've done something incredible to win this position. And I don't know what it is, but I am about to find out, and I am terrified.

Roark knocks on his helmet one-two-three times, and then all lights go out save the one affixed to his head.

"But tell me, can you still fight without sight?"

His words send chills down my throat, and I call out for Lup immediately.

_Hey, chill out! I'm still at your feet. Wait what's—_

Something _swings_ down on my piplup, and then his presence is gone. I catch a faint grumble of _geodude_ and squeal, darting back, my hands scrabbling for purchase on any one thing in the everlasting darkness. Roark's light cuts like a blade as he steps closer, then farther, calling out to his geodudes and his onix and the other rock monsters of the cavern.

Then I sense the flit-flat of wings in the air.

_LUP THERE ARE ZUBATS WHERE ARE YOU?  
_

No freaking response. This is what I get for only using one pokemon. It was a stupid geodude too. Where in the world did my piplup go?

The hiss of poison-bat wings whisk overhead, and with a shriek, I duck, crouching into the ground, searching fitfully through the rocky darkness for my stupid stupid pokemon. Rocks sink into my hands; the darkness beckons. Roark's blade of light slices outwards, glistening farther and farther away from me, and ever less light penetrates through my senses. _Lup_, I growl, _if you're just sitting around, having a good time while I worry my bum off for your stupid sake..._

Of course not. Of course that's not how it is. The thought glides down my back with a scythe-like shiver, frigid, hitching something indescribably thick and ugly into my throat. I struggle to breathe—close my eyes—struggle to breathe—Roark's still way over there—struggle to breathe—can't find my one pokemon—don't have any sort of defense—just want to freaking _breathe..._ and it all goes wheezing out of me.

"Layke," I try, but my voice comes out weak, quiet, unsure. "Layke," I try again, and it's worse, weaker, quieter, questionable. "Layke, where are..." but at this point, my words are whispers of the wind.

D-Drat. I... I bet Roark went after him.

I stand, my rain boots fitfully clacking on stone, and that is when I sense the shaking of the very rocks holding me up. The chatter of zubats overhead again, but their screeches are now accompanied by a voice's sharp hiss.

"_Maybe we should've gone for the other mine. I think this one's abandoned, Commander."_

That is decidedly not Layke. Nor Lucaro. If only it was Lucar—

"LUCARO!"

And immediately his paw is on my shoulder. Through panted breaths, he asks, "What is it, Niri?"

"I—did you hear—"

Then _he_ shushes _me_, and our silence eclipses the foul sputter of sinister overhead sound.

"_It's too late to do that, you idiot. We'll just have to see what we can find in this one. There must be something—or someone—to equip to our cause."_

Lucaro's paw tightens about my shoulder. "I don't like that," he utters, his voice more aura than spoken.

"Y-Yeah..." I laugh weakly. "Me neither... T-Too bad I can't find my stupid piplup..." Drawing a stream of hair behind an ear, I gaze at him, the only one I could find who came for me when I called.

The lucario stiffens, his amber eyes sharpening. The aura in his paws illuminates his presence a stark cobalt. "Lup? He is on the ground just over there."

"Oh, _great..._" I follow the gesture of Lucaro's paw, and there my idiot penguin lies, his head jammed against the spiked wall within an unfortunate crevice. If I draw him back into his poke ball now, I'll be disqualified, but if I leave him to rot with his head stuck in the efface... well I guess there's no reason not to leave him there for now. Maybe I can convince Roark to give me a badge out of sheer determination.

"Niri, why are you hesitating? We must tell Roark about what we have just heard."

I shake myself. "You—Oh—Right. Right..." What a kind lucario. He's kinder than me and Layke Layke was here... well, whatever. He's not. Probably out there somewhere, in the dark with his pokemon, demolishing the creatures of this cave in easy, affable waves of his stupid soft hands that I definitely don't want to hold right now.

Lucaro's paw slides down and tightens around my wrist. He leads me through the darkened carnage, our cage of rock, his glowing aura closing in upon the light that streams from Roark's head. The burst of gold lights his pale face and the dark rims of his glasses, his eyes practically glowing.

Panting, the gym leader faces the lucario. "Wh-What are _you_ still doing here? You've greatly weakened my assault. I'm surprised you've taken nary a hit. D-Didn't I tell you to go and I'd meet you outside with the gym badge?" No—Wait. He's not facing Lucaro; he's facing the girl behind Lucaro. Frick, that's me.

"Did you say..?" I squeak.

"Yes! Your lucario's a _beast_! I told him to let you go!"

"Well—uh—"

I let Lucaro cut me off. "I have more pressing matters to alert you to, gym leader! I must, I..." He releases a breath, and Roark fills it.

"YOU CAN TALK?!"

Lucaro drags a paw down his snout. "Now is not the time to react to my speaking ability! Your gym is in danger! Niri and I heard someone speaking in a greatly ominous tone about taking things for their own gain! I do not know what they seek, but I fear we are about to find out!"

I look up in the light of Roark's helmet, and then—a shadow arcs along the ceiling, crushing to the ground beside us, followed by an absolute fleet of nasty azure bats, their sinister purple wings shuddering with poisonous intent.

"IT IS TIME TO FALL TO THE WRATH OF TEAM GALACTIC!"

A ball of fire explodes at our feet, and I watch it morph into the chimchar. The—The stolen chimchar.

Oh my goodness.

In the light of Roark's helmet, I make out the brown face, the weird diagonally-cut white hair, the sharp eyes, the angry moue at her lips, the clothes claimed with a G-shaped insignia.

"It's you!" I cry, and I tap Lucaro to attack her. He misunderstands and instead punts the chimchar across the room. "No—Lucaro—Go for the stupid girl!"

He looks up from his puntage to shake his head roughly. "I refuse to harm a defenseless human, Niri."

Now the girl flinches from the lucario speaking, and I think we need to start hiding the fact that he can talk, because this is ridiculous. No wonder the poor guy was happy to join our team, to find himself a group that wouldn't do _this_ upon his every little word.

While she's distracted, I pick up a rock and chuck it at her face. Lucky me, my aim sails true and smacks her in the forehead, to which she collapses.

I am not a pokemon; I have zero qualms about rocking a fellow defenseless human to the face.

Roark watches all of this with the fakest attempt at a resolute complexion that I have ever seen in my entire life. Finally it shatters and he shrieks, outright _shrieks_, "I THINK THE MINE IS COLLAPSING!"

Both my head and Lucaro's flit sharply into his direction. "WHAT?"

My yell overshadows his, and the gym leader decidedly does not take another second to react to the lucario's speakage. "Y-Y-YEAH! I HEAR IT SHIFTING EVER SO SLIGHTLY! WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE IT STARTS TO FALL APART!"

"IF ITS SHIFTING EVER SO SLIGHTLY IS ENOUGH TO MAKE IT BLOW TO SMITHEREENS AROUND US, THEN WHY IN THE WORLD DID YOU MAKE THIS YOUR GYM, YOU FREAKING LOSER?" I spew out before I can stop myself. Behind me, I sense Lucaro shifting through the rocks and plucking the girl I beaned to her feet. Blood dribbles down her face in a tear-like motion; then I have to stop looking at her. I can't take the sleep-like emotion captured within her face, worn down with exhaustion and crippling failure.

He even goes out of his way to search out the poke ball and let the chimchar back in, equipping the ball to the unrightful owner's belt.

"IT'S NOT THAT THE GYM IS WEAK!" Roark shouts back, hoarse, "IT'S THAT THEY ARE USING SOME FORM OF EXPLOSIVE OR EXTREMELY POWERFUL POKEMON TO RESHAPE THE CHEMISTRY OF THE VERY EARTH WE ARE SOON TO BE TRAPPED INSIDE! NOW _MOVE_!"

He shoves me backwards, and, blindly, I begin to run. His light dances over the earth in jagged swings, and in each lurch I search for blue hair, a tatty tee, a stupid smile, his bright green turtwig. And in each swing there is nothing, no indication of him.

"Layke?" I try, and I force it louder. "LAAYYYKE, WE HAVE TO GO! THE MINE IS CLOSING DOWN ON US!"

And... nothing. Lucaro, with the chimchar-stealer tossed over his shoulder, glances back, his gaze lined in bright aura. "I... do not see him, Niri."

"WH-WHAT? WHERE ELSE WOULD HE BE?"

Then her voice.

The chimchar-stealer mumbles through her pain, "You stupid girl, he probably found us and is trying to stop the mine from collapsing. I can't believe you threw a rock at me, urrgghhhhh..."

"L-Lucaro, don't let go of her."

"Wasn't planning on it."

We near the entrance, and I draw out my poke ball, tugging Lup into safety. I guess we'll have to visit the pokemon center here. I hope she's not creepy like... Morrow...  
But now isn't the time to be worrying about that, now is it.

While her eyes fade in and out, I ask her, "You—You chimchar-stealer, what do you mean, he's probably fighting you? Who is he fighting?"

She manages to draw her head up enough to glare into my face. The blood dribbles from the spot in her forehead, down her cheek, down her chin, dripping onto the earth so quietly I can't even hear it. "My name is _Keebae, _okay, not chimchar-stealer, so shut up about that crap. _Al_so, the chimchar would be rotting in a poke ball in that lousy professor's lab, so... a-again, just, just _shhhut_ up about that crap. Okay.

"He's fighting Team Galactic, obviously. Can't read my shirt, now can you?"

"I..." I sputter. "I mean, I read the G on it, but I had no idea what it stood for..."

Up the sloping pathway, with Lucaro's assistance, we make it into stark daylight. I cover my face with my hands and groan. Lucaro huddles beside me, and I can hear Roark counting us, coming up with me, muttering, "There was definitely one other person in there..."

Don't... Don't tell me he mistook Lucaro's voice for Layke's. Don't tell me he heard two human voices and decided that he definitely didn't hear the lucario, then just assumed it meant Layke was with us.

Hopefully, I draw my hands aside and glance about the area, but there is no blue-haired idiot strolling around and waiting for us. There is no best friend hanging out in my periphery, asking with his soft eyes for me to say his name, to dart over there and hug him and ask him where he was.

The resound rumble of rock shuddering begins behind us, first softly, then harder, then horrid crackling and screeching as rubble crunches against rubble and further reduces itself to pebbles asunder.

I watch wreckage fill the hole that we just exited, and I swallow the hard knot of rock-like intensity in my throat.

"Keebae, h-he wouldn't have fought Team Galactic, though... he's terrified of human interaction..."

"Well, that's his problem for being a wuss," she smirks, her tongue darting over her lip and catching the slightest edge of blood. A grimace pockmarks her stupid smug face. "Maybe he didn't fight us at all. Maybe he froze in place. _May_be he surrendered and let us take him. _Maybe_ we knocked him out and threw him in a bag. _Maybe_ we even left him to die. Or _mmmmmaybe_... we took him in.

"No idea~"

As my heart climbs the lethal staircase up my throat and into my mouth, I uselessly pluck a rock from the pile of rubbish from the heart of the cavern and throw it at her face.

And again I don't miss, and finally she goes silent—

And Lucaro gives me this horrible, emotional, despondent look, his amber eyes twinkling with the residue of starlike tears. "N-Niri, stop throwing rocks at her. Now we'll have to wait even longer before we can get any information out of her."

"I don't care," I mutter, slouching into myself, balling my hands into my pockets, "I don't care, I don't care, I don't care..."

Between me and Lucaro, the gym leader watches. Then, very slowly, he pulls a small pouch out of his pocket and hands one of its contents to Lucaro while he eyes me. "S-So your lucario can speak."

I release a long breath. "Sure."

"Ah... sorry about that. I must've confused his voice with your friend's. I... I thought he was with us."

I drag my sleeve across my face. "Yeah, okay." Just lost my best friend in your death cave of everlasting darkness.

I lack the strength to yell at him. To throw some more rocks, to sic my stupid weak piplup on him, to...

_They took Layke... they took Layke and now he's gone..._

"Uhh. Sorry about that, again.

He awkwardly draws out my palm and places another tiny badge into my hand, a little twinkling black promise. "Uh. Give that to your friend when you see him again. He won it for sure. His geodude and turtwig were a great combination."

And like that, he strolls off in the same leisurely manner that Layke would've if he_ was here and unharmed._


	4. Hopeless Guidance

**Oh man, what'll happen next!  
Layke is gone?! Will we ever hear from him EVER AGAIN? I DON'T KNOW (no that's not true, I do know haha)**

**Well at least we still have Lucaro... right?**

**Also, dang, thanks again for your continued support, OMG! You are so kind! I greatly appreciate it C:**

Chapter 4: Hopeless Guidance

Once we've rented one of the open rooms of the Oreburgh Pokemon Center, Lucaro flops his dead-weight chimchar-stealer onto the bed, and we awkwardly scrunch together on its edge, sinking into the sheets.

"So... that was, uh..." Drawing off, I tuck my hair behind an ear. My fingers twist around a small braid—and the violent memories come flooding through my mind. Frantically I drop it and scowl, glaring at the floor. "That... D-Dang it, Lucaro, what are we supposed to do now?"

"Wait for the girl, Keebae, to recover," he responds, his paw against my shoulder in that place where—my best friend... put _his hand._

"D-D-D-Do you think Layke's—"

"No." His voice is hushed, softer, and his head leans close to mine. Bright amber eyes hold me, steady me. "I did not sense his energy. My aura, when I used it to search for any living beings as we made our escape... saw nothing. No Team, ah, G? None of them, save Keebae. No Layke, either. They must have found another way out."

Leaning into the lucario, his soft fur rubbing against my skin, I whisper, "I wonder how he even found them... I-It was so _dark_, Lucaro. I couldn't even see my freaking piplup, let alone a secret tunnel leading to wherever that awful chimchar stealing idiot girl came from! Rrggghh..."

"She would not like it if you called her a chimchar stealing idiot."

I blink. "Y-Yeah. Well. I didn't like it when she was an absolute _snob_ to me." Flushing, I mutter, "I don't know if your talking was a good idea either... everyone gets so weird when you do it, which I guess makes sense, but... it draws so much attention..."

"Do... you think I should stay silent?" Lucaro pauses, a fist against his mouth. "You may be correct. I notice, now, a pattern of mistakes that resulted from revealing my humanese to the humans. For all we know, Layke could be safe right now, in another world where you and I did not..." Bites his lip.

"Oh—Don't say that, Lucaro." I nudge him, like he's a person—like he's Layke. Gosh, this is weird. "I'm happy you're here. You're strong." He's... by no means a replacement, but—

_Hey, at least you won't fall in love with this one, right?_

He has a terrible habit of chirping in at the worst times. _Go to sleep, Lup. You zonked yourself out real hard on that giant rock._

_Okay, that was the fault of the rock who pushed me into the other giant rock. I take no blame._

_Whatever, Lup._

I'm just tired. Tired and...

There's this hole in my chest. I sense it, try to touch it, try to pinch it shut, but it refuses my prodding and stays. All I can do is meaninglessly wonder if it'll ever go away.

Shifting on the bed. I go alert, my body tensing, eyes dipping into our hostage's direction. Hostage? Can she be a hostage if she's from some sort of evil organization that, either way, kidnapped my best friend? This makes us even, doesn't it? Not that Keebae's any amount of competent at pokemon battling. The image of Lucaro punting her flameball of a chimchar across the dark chamber returns vividly to my mind, and I swallow my laughter.

A shady bruise raised around her forehead from where the rocks struck. Her narrow, jaded gaze widens as she pieces together her memories from earlier, and a sharp edge overcomes her features in a shadowy snarl.

"Oh, great. Still stuck with you punks." She doesn't bother to move from the bed, just morphs her hands into fists and throws a glance at the door. "Not gonna let me go free, are you? I—I have a _job_, okay, a job that I have to do."

I snort. Lucaro's presence leaves my side, and I break eye contact with our snot-nosed hostage to watch him slouch over the door's frame, one aura-lanced paw held out in front of him. He mutters, "Not a threat. A, ah, a promise, if you don't tell us what we need to know."

"Ohhhh, _great, great great great great..._" Keebae flops, seething, into the pillow. "You're _mean_. Just let me go already. I did nothing wrong, and Dad's gonna be mad if I take too long." She—freezes—when the word escapes her mouth, _Dad_.

Who's Dad?

Something tells me that asking her won't garner us an answer, but I really don't have much _else_ to lose. "Dad?"

"Y-Yeah, my _dad_, duh." One of her eyes peeks out over her arms, curled up around her face, and she squints it as narrow as possible to craft a thinly sharp glare. Accidentally blinks—stiffens—tries again. Settles on a weak stare. "He's not my real dad, but he's as close to a dad as I'm getting, okay. And the longer I stay stuck here, the more disappointed he'll be in me when I get back. I already _told_ you what I know about your dumb boyfriend, so just... let me go, okay. I have no more uses to you anyways. I'm not a, a Commander, or anything." Commander... where do I know that word from...

Lucaro comes alert at the door. "Which Commander destroyed the Oreburgh gym, Keebae?" Ah, that's where. That grunt overhead had referred to their companion as one—the one who must've made the decision to destroy the gym.

She turns to face him and scowls. "Freaking... talking lucario. This thing wasn't around when I saw you last."

"Yeah, well, none of your business," I jump in. "You're the one who kidnapped the chimchar—"

"Shut up shut up shut up," her cheeks fume, blazing hot, and her voice squeaks emphatically, "no I didn't, I'm giving him a better life, don't even _think_ about taking him back from me because I'll bite your face off before I let you do that!"

I scoot closer to her, just out of her hands' reach. "Bite my face off? Geez, what are you, an animal?"

"E-Excuse me!" She launches up and lurches my way, then curls up into herself before she even tries to touch me, tucking her hands protectively around her knees. "Who threw rocks at my face, okay? That was very mean of you. You're mean. I thought you were cute, but you're just, just, just mean."

"Ahhh... do not say such things, Keebae!" Lucaro chimes in, his weirdly emotional eyes welling up with bright color. "Niri is merely upset that your organization kidnapped her friend, and you are the one she has decided to take out her anger upon! I promise you she is rather much kinder than she seems, for she let me join her own organization!"

"We—" I flush. "Lucaro, we're not an _organization_. We're a team. We work together, not... take orders from some elite, elusive bossman who most likely _sucks_."

Alert again, Keebae reveals her dark face from behind her knees. "Excuse _me_, but we're also a team. Team Galactic, duh. And our 'elite, elusive bossman' is actually my _dad_, okay—and he's cool. That's why I let him be my _dad_." Then she looks up from the bedsheets and stares into me. I—hesitate, as her eyes soften and face opens up and the tenseness evaporates from her narrow, harsh mouth.

"Y-You don't have to be so mean, okay. I'm just doing my best. I'm not killing anyone, not hurting anything. I'm just doing what Dad wants, so at least one person in this stupid, cursed world will like me."

Her mouth opens to continue, but I intercede. "No. _Noooo_ no no no no. You do _not _get to cry to me about your sad, sad story. You blew up a freaking gym, probably killed some pokemon that couldn't escape in time, and _now_ my best friend is missing. Say what_ever_ you want, but that's not cool, and you're _not_ convincing me otherwise, so we're not letting you go." I-I mean, I don't know what we're gonna _do_ with her, but the thought of releasing this animalistic thing... makes my stomach curdle into knots.

Her eyes seek further into mine, then frantically dart back. She hides her face behind her hands and mutters, "Let me go see my dad... _I _didn't blow it up, Commander Mars did... He already likes Mars more than he likes me, okay... this is just gonna make everything so much _worse_..." As she whispers, she curls further into her self, her words softer, weaker, heavier.

I get up. To—To hit her, shake her, hurt her, snap her out of her stupid sappy stupor, I'm not sure. But I get up and I march over there—only for a hand of blue aura to hold me back. My head snaps up and I growl, "_Lu_caro, what are you—" and he zips past me, crouching in front of the girl.

"We will let you go." He must miss the scowl of disgust on my face, because he continues on like it's not there. "We will let you go, but only under one condition—but we _will _let you go." His paws gently cup around her face, and he tilts her tear-stained chin up to face him. "My one condition is this: that you _tell _us everything you learn about the boy, Layke, who was with us. He has... he looks like this."

His amber eyes shut, and his head bumps against hers; with a gasp, she wrenches her suddenly bright gaze open and shudders around his grip. "H-How did you..." But she draws off, as if in fear, and she gazes upon the lucario.

"I have established an aura link between us." Blue aura drips from his paw and solidifies around her arm like a bracelet. "I will know if you are lying, Keebae, and I will sense when you, in particular, are near. The next time we find you, you will tell us what you know." Then he steps back, distancing himself, grappling my arm with a paw.

"Now please, reunite with your father."

She stares at me, mouth agape, then darts to her feet, standing woozily, shaking, panting, checking for her poke balls, checking for her chimchar, and she's gone from the chamber, the door slamming behind her.

Once she's gone, I turn on him. "Lucaro, what the heck? She—"

"She did not know anything. Could you not tell, Niri?" His great amber eyes meet mine; his whole body radiates of an inner focus that I most certainly lack, and it's never been more clear to me than now. "She merely wished to see her father once again. It would be cruel of us to imprison her here, whether or not her people did the same to Layke. The cycle of suffering only ends when one party has elected not to continue it—and I am doing just that." And I—well, I can't really say anything to that.

My heart chills, and I stumble against him, letting my head rest on his shoulder. "I'm very mad, but I'm also very tired." Sigh. Breathe. "And I guess you're a lot smarter than I am, because I wasn't thinking through my emotions, just, uh, just feeling them. S-Sorry, Lucaro."

His paw pats the side of my head once, and he says, "It is alright, Niri. I am also worried for the sake of our friend, but... now at least we have a way of learning more. Keebae will meet her father, and she now has an incentive to discover what they did to the boy. And we have a way of accessing her once again."

"You... urrrggh, you stupid smart lucario, you're right..." Something about his actions and me, his nasty mirrored opposite, just... boils my blood. He knows what to do, has known this whole time. I can't help but doubt myself, then lash out at this poor freaking little girl who just wants to see her dad. How old is she—fourteen, fifteen? Gosh. Who am I to judge, really?

Who am I, indeed...

Dragging my hair behind an ear, I mutter, "Well, now what?"

"We could continue the search for ourselves. Perhaps the more experienced gym leaders will know more entailing the feats of this Team Galactic."

"H-Haha..." I shake my head. "Roark did _not. _That... man, he was so awkward. I'm embarrassed for him. I guess he's probably never had a run-in with, who are they, Team Galactic, what a name. But... geez, he was a mess. Just gave us the freaking badges and walked off...

Lucaro pads over to the door and tugs it open, gesturing my way. I start to walk until I hesitate, until the hand is around my throat and I can't stop it from spilling out, slowly until I can't stop it. "I-I... Lucaro, what if they come for me next? They—They just..._ gone_, with Layke, I... I d-d-don't feel safe... I'm kind of... I mean, I'm not strong. My piplup isn't all that strong. I mean, he is, but he also really isn't yet. And it's not like y-you'll be around every single time I need help. L-Like who knows when I'll be in danger? Wh-Wh-Wh-What does Team Galactic even _want_? I-I... I... I'm scared... I'm really scared, Lucaro..." The floor shudders, and I crouch, and I breathe, but it's never fast enough.

"Niri..."

I look up and he's gone on his stupid silent toes. Frantically I force myself back to my feet and stumble after him, out the door, beyond the pokemon center, into the muddled town of Oreburgh. It's practically unchanged save for the kidnapped traveler who none of them would even recognize if they saw him again. I clutch at Lucaro, and he—he glances back.

"Oh I... sorry. I was planning to return shortly. I just wanted to find... I thought I saw..."

He leads me along, through the small village, past rock-walled houses and over rock pathways, until we reach the entrance of the once-gym. The sign for it has snapped over, hit by a rock or fractured by the quaking earth below.

Lucaro eyes this sign, the sharp metal rod that once held it up, and he crouches in front of it. His paws intercept its edges, then he tugs at it, fractures of concentration breaking out along his forehead.

With a grunt, he forces the rod out of the ground. He returns to his place in front of me, gesturing to open up my hands. Then he deposits this giant cold rod into my palms. "There. Now you will always have protection."

I bite into my lip. "Lucaro, this thing's _cold_."

He shrugs. "Your body will be colder if its corpse is left..." draws off. "I said nothing."

"D-D-Did you just make a _death_ joke? Geeeeez, Lucaro, a-a-aren't you just full of surprises!"

"I-I-I do not mean it. Please do not judge me. I am just trying to help."

"No it's... It's..." I stop, look back, struggle with the smirk on my face. "You're fine, Lucaro. I was just surprised." Of all people, why am I the one with the talking lucario?

We make our way to a small outcropping and forge our way up it with the wonderful assistance of Lucaro's aura powers. I find added help in my giant cold pole, which I wedge into the ground like a walking stick and awkwardly shimmy my way up the path. As we leave Oreburgh behind us, the sky begins to darken, the sun sinking into the horizon.

Layke's bag had my sleeping bag. Our first-aid, our extra clothes and poke balls and berries for when we were too scared to heal at Nurse Morrow's. Pretty much everything.

Chuckling softly, I finger the braid he tied for me just yesterday. "I guess we'll really be roughing it out here in the wildlife, huh? Layke had all our supplies..."

"Ah... really now. That is... unfortunate." Lucaro... frowns. "We will have to find some pokemon trainers to fight and earn money from them."

"Oh. Right."

Really pays off to have an overly developed lucario on the team. I'd lost a lot of my battle money already due to a certain piplup's inability to fight. And of course, if he was awake, he'd blame it on my lack of experience...

But this isn't so bad. The fresh, outdoorsy breeze, the bright plants and the hushed whisper of pokemon feet and pokemon voices, just outside of our periphery. The darkness settles in a dreamlike serenade, and the nighttime orchestra resounds around us, overwhelmingly slow and nuanced, wholly enamoring.

Trees' boughs quiver above us as if in laughter. I reach out and pluck a berry from one, then another, proffering it to the lucario at my side. He takes one and tries it, then sighs in soft pleasure, berry juice splattered across his snout.

As the darkness beckons, we forge our own path through knotted trees' roots and bushels and the quiet reminder that we are not alone in this world, that hundreds of breathing beings rest at our feet and overhead and sing just so softly in the moonlight.

He's lost in it. He can hear it all, of course, and whatever it is, it compels a winking tear in the edge of his gaze.

Maybe it's just the peace. Peace after whatever he lived through to make it to here.


	5. A Man's Astronomical Vision

**Sorry for the delay! College likes to sap up my time. I do what I can, though~  
As y'all can see, I don't plan on giving this story up, so do not fear! It is just sometimes a struggle to get chapters up in a timely manner. But hey, this one's longer! Wow!**

**Thanks again OMG for your sweet words! They mean a lot ^^ Also, you right, haha, I should probably switch the rating to T. (I did!) I try real hard to write stories that are kid-friendly, but then they get kind of serious and I should maybe just give up on that dream, hahahaha.**

Chapter 5: A Man's Astronomical Vision

_Layke_

My footsteps resound like dim teardrops down the long corridor. I can't see the hall, since there happens to be a bag over my head, but the rough hands that clasp me around the wrist, holding my hands twisted behind my back, haven't pushed me in awhile.

That was pretty stupid of me. Just thinking about it makes the shame of my idiocy flush through my cheeks with the fleeting passage of a bad dream, except for the whole part where morning doesn't come, can't come, won't come. Really makes you... rethink your actions, when this is where they land you, uh?

But it's too late to change anything, so to march is all I can manage. The bag rustles against my skin, coarse, and it faintly smells of Niri's weird, soft lotion yet oceany scent. I'd watched them—the people whose hands now chain me—dump the contents of my bag to the ground, then flop it over my head, leaving her blankets and extra jacket and all of our meager cash to be lost to the oncoming avalanche of rock.

Why did I do that... why did I falter...

Nice going, right? I find a secret cave and take my pokemon in with me, thinking there to be some sort of secret extra boss, and this is where I am now.

Well, I guess I'm gonna find the secret extra boss. Sure would be cool if they hadn't confiscated my pokemon. Of course, wouldn't be a problem if I could speak to them like freaking Niri. Too bad she's not here.

Though I guess it's for the best if she's not.  
If she's safe... My heart ties a sudden bow in my chest.

Finally a nudge, then a _thrust_ as I'm pulled aside and directed into another long hallway. No warning, no anything, just shoves that serve as conversation.

It... gosh, it hits in the heart as a slap from Niri. She must be... She _must_ be worried, right? What did she do when she couldn't find me? I-Is she still looking? Did the cave collapse over her? Did she...

Would _really_ pay off if _my_ pokemon could communicate with me.

Would really pay off if I wasn't so useless, but we all saw how that went. I... Niri says I'm strong, says I always beat her when we train because I know what I'm doing (and her piplup doesn't), but then something like this trips me up, and I can't help but wonder what I'd see in myself if I had a mirror. Instead I'm left in the dark of my own freaking bag.

_Where are you taking me_, I think about asking, but the words don't quite leave my mouth. They've yet to say anything: to each other, to me. To their pokemon. The way they fought, in robotic symmetry, working in tandem to effectively cut off my escape and knock down my unfairly weak pokemon with such little effort—just thinking about it makes me shiver.

And they're so quiet, deathly quiet, icy quiet. Don't speak when I trip and manage to trip one of them to the ground, don't speak when they pick me back up and set me straight.

They don't speak when they stop, just tug me to a halt and go still, chillingly still. I struggle, a little, in their grip, just to test it, and ultimately give up before I've really tried to break through.

The bag is lifted from my face, and my eyes meet this horrifyingly sharp gray gaze.

I stare into it, mesmerizingly gray, as silvery speckles dance slowly around the pupils. "Wow, who _are_ you?"

The man gazes back and utters, "My name is none of your concern."

My mouth opens, then shuts, then opens again. "Wow." A little sensational trill spills down my spine. "Nice, dude." Then the words tumble out, and I can't stop them as I strain against my captors' hold: "But seriously like what in the world _are_ you because whoa, though, you look so evil and tough."

He can't do anything else to me, at this point, right? So... who cares if I speak?

A sickly silence hovers over the chamber. Behind the sharp man's head of spiked blue hair lies some sort of control panel, with blinky buttons and bleepy sounds. In a chair by the largest monitor, a woman in a tight black-and-white dress sits, her hands on a keyboard and computer mouse. The only speck of color in the entire room is her choppy red hair—and probably the flush on my face, too.

Niri's... not here, so there's that.

"What is your name?" the man asks, his tone low and gruff and commanding of my attention. It curls in through my ears and snakes about my heart, tugging into me, coiling about me, holding me deathly close.

Licking my lips, I reply, "None of your concern, my good sir," my eyes still trained upon the girl in the corner. I have no idea who she is, but when I force my eyes on her, this pale short-haired woman with the only color in the room, it focuses my mind on her, and this narrow-faced man's snake-shaped words don't quite grasp hold of me.

When I think about it, when I'm allowed to think about it... I hate how much my body compels me to speak.

A weight attacks my shoulder. I flinch; it's the man's pale, weathered hand. "My name is Cyrus. Now tell me yours."

"Layke," I wheeze, "it's Layke, it's Layke..." and it comes out so sudden I hardly notice until his head has leaned in close to me, so close our noses just about touch. His scent of the outdoors overwhelms me: trees and flowers and little fresh clovers. I keep waiting for some sort of unnatural smell to hit me, some kind of perfumey chemical, but it never does.

"Lake," he utters in a low growl.

"No, no." I shake my head. "_Layke_."

He blinks. "Ah. Layke." (There is no pronunciation difference, but somehow I know he gets it this time.) "Layke, you shall join our cause. There is no other option: for someone whose prowess reaches all the way to me, your path is not allowed to cross any other. This is all that remains of you.

"Come this way."

The grunts suddenly release me, and I can feel my pulse beating again. "What if... I don't want to?"

My best friend is out there somewhere with no extra anything if she gets cold, and she's got actually, literally zero money. No food, no supplies... All she's got with her are a piplup, a talking lucario, and her wits. Maybe a helpful freaking chapstick in her pocket.  
If... people like _these_ guys are out in the shadows, just waiting to kidnap a cute girl like her, then, like... she might be next.

Ah—Wait, if I'm _part_ of these guys, then I could stop her from—

"There is _no_ other option, Layke. You must join Team Galactic. It is your destiny, your galactic fate."

Well, great. I just realized joining them is in my best interests anyways. "Okay. I guess I'm in, then."

Gosh, this is why I hate strangers. You never freaking know when something like _this_ might happen. I go through all this effort to get us to Oreburgh without interacting in a big city, without letting something happen to Niri like what happened to my mom, and all for what?

No, no... I can't think like that. Ignore the dull throbbing pain... I could still keep her safe. This might even let me keep her safer. Safer than she would've been if we were still together.

Together. The word draws a dull, bittersweet ache in my chest.

"Follow me, Lay—"

"_Wait wait_ wwwwwait, Dad I'm—

Someone's head rams against my back. "I'm... here," the imposter finishes, then snaps her mouth shut. She squirms out from under my shadow, her long diagonally-cut hair streaming behind her like a blizzard. Her narrow eyes grow narrower the moment she meets my face.

Huh. It's that chimchar-stealer from before.

Ah—_Galactic—_That's what the G on her shirt stood for.

"Keebae," Cyrus switches from me to her, "your tardiness?"

"I..." She swallows. "The cave-in... I, uhm, I got stuck in the rocks... b-but I made it out as quickly as I could." As if in memory of the pain, her hand cups a sore spot on her forehead. Other than that, she's relatively unscathed, though dirt clods her clothing in such detail that it almost looks like she rolled in some before running over here—but why would she do that? Clearly it's the cave-in that smattered the dirt all over her. There is definitely no other explanation that I just don't know about.

Unless there is, of course, but how silly would that be? Why am I dwelling on this, anyways?

Although his face and voice don't change, somehow the very air of the chamber has gotten heavier. Maybe it's the way he reluctantly speaks, his voice rising over the girl who referred to him as _dad_. "Sloppy." Then he gestures to a hallway at the other end of the room, and little Keebae looks up at me, a snarl splitting across her face, before she turns and rushes off into the metal corridor.

The woman with red hair watches this. While Cyrus gazes after Keebae's departure, _she_ gets up. Her heels click as she walks over to me, and she's taller, but only by her shoes.

"You will refer to me as Commander Mars, grunt. Now answer me: why did Keebae look at you with such animosity? How does she know you?"

"I don't..." Geez, what's it this woman want with me? "I don't really know." Niri, probably. Some sort of connection to her—

Wait—Keebae might know something about her. Why did this just occur to me.

Without another thought to it, I twirl and dart down the opposite hallway, Keebae's slight form growing closer and closer. She's stopped running once Cyrus has looked away, and I easily surpass her, grabbing at her arm and tugging her to a halt. "H-HEY! L-L-Let go of me! You and your _stupid_ girlfriend have done enough for me today, you—rrrrgghh!"

"What?" I whisper. "What did Niri do?"

"Niri—" Flustered, she glares up at me. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe _this_?" And she points at the sore on her forehead. "N-Niri has a terribly good aim." Under her breath, she adds, "I hate that she's so cute. It's not fair... all cute girls are mean..."

"Hey!" I brighten. "I think she's cute too! We have that in common!"

"Y-YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO HEAR THAT." Keebae blinks her too-bright eyes rapidly, breathing hard. "Besides, it doesn't matter if she _was _cute... she's _mean_..."

If... Keebae saw her, then that means... "D-D'you know if Niri's okay? I heard that landslide and..."

Her eyes slowly, slowly creep up to me, and this awfully sinister grin cracks along her lips. "Oh, you sure you can handle it?" Over her shoulder, at the pit of the hallway, I catch the two grunts who kidnapped me fast-walking up to us. She senses my body tensing, and her speech slurs, quickening. "Yeah, I _saw_ her in the landslide. I watched the rocks fall around her, and I watched her scramble for purchase, for _safe_ty. I watched your stupid talking lucario block a few rocks from falling down on her, but before long, there were too many.

"I watched her die down there, you hear me? So you should just _let go_ of your attachment to her and join us with an empty heart. Let it fill you." Her gaze averts, and she mutters, "It's the easiest way to live again..."

Then hands shackle over me once more, and the grunts hurdle me onward. They're in front of me, dragging my reluctant feet, and as they heave and shove, I catch—a red mark around their necks, peeking above their matching shirt-collars, a red mark I didn't see around Keebae.

Does that... have something to do with...

But then my head can't focus on that, can't focus on it at all, and all I see is _her _face, her face, her face tattered by the rocks. Worn with exhaustion and pain and—and—and... gosh, I don't know. I don't _know_. I don't really want to know, either, yet at the same time it overflows my headspace, the many ways that Niri could've been torn apart. And then it's her eyes, her bright blue eyes, like quartz yet with this utterly faint blue sheen—growing brighter by the moment as she stares up at me, then cut off and unmistakably dull, so dull, so... cold. Like I'm a stranger. Like I'm nothing. Like the world holds nothing left to offer her.

I reach out, but I can't touch her, and I watch her falter over and over again. Then the grunts release me in front of their leader with his speckled hazel eyes, their leader who killed my—

I... have no other option. He said so himself. I don't want to know what he'll do if I refuse.

_Or maybe I do._

It could have anything in the world to do with the strange red circle around each silent grunt's neck.

M-Maybe they just got the exact same injuries while fighting me, but... I catch Mars's pale neck from her seat, and I wonder again why the grunts won't speak. Maybe they're just shy, like me, but somehow, there's this awfully, uncomfortably warm sensation lanced within the very air of the chamber, and I feel it pressurizing in my lungs. I wish I knew how to ask about it without sounding suspicious. Niri's—Niri was good at that.

Releasing sharp breaths that squeeze around my throat, I fill the silence before Cyrus can poison it with his utter presence. "She watched my best friend die."

His brows but quirk for a moment; then his face returns to its stony complexion. "I see. Do not act out of place again—Do precisely as I or your commanders enforce, or I will stifle your potential. You do not want to meet such a fate, Layke." His lips dwell on my name, and I shudder with the crack of the _k._

Red-haired Mars watches the tension twist between us. She gazes at the computer console for a moment, then steps into place by Cyrus's side. "Don't take this proposition lightly. Dear Cyrus sees something wonderful in you—if he's giving you this chance, then he desires to cultivate your strength in order to realize his perfect dream. You want this."

She brushes by me as she returns to the console.

I stare up at tall, striking, incisive Cyrus as Keebae's words rotate around my head, its planetary axis too strong to ignore.

_...just let go of your attachment... join us... let it fill you..._

_ join us... fill you... fill you... fill you..._

_It's the easiest way to live again._

Breathing in sharply, wincing, I mutter, "O-Okay. I won't act out again, I-I swear." I have nothing else to live for, anyways.

My best... _Niri's_... H-How did it come to this...

And I don't know. I truly don't. I just watch, dumbfounded, as Cyrus gestures for me to follow him down another endless hallway, and so I blindly do. He doesn't speak, and I have nothing left to say, hardly any reason to exist. I'm just going.

They're gonna make Turt and Geodudette strong, huh... well I guess that's a reason to stay around, to see them become the protectors they never could've been for Ni...

Breathing hurts. How am I gonna get through this.

_Niri_

"Alright, Lucaro. Now what?"

After a night of sleeping in the woods and a breakfast of nature's berries, I'm surprisingly awake. The sun peeks out from the overhead branches, glimmering over us like a happy sign. It dances warmly over my skin. If only all days could start like this.

Lucaro shifts over to me, pointing through the trees. "I see some children playing over there with their little pokemon. We could fight them."

I sigh, closing my eyes. "I feel terrible about this."

He shrugs. "I do not. They captured those pokemon and tore them from their families, almost entirely without a care for the will of the pokemon they now refer to as _partners_. It is sickening, and we need supplies, so why not use it from their poisoned careers as trainers?"

I cup my hands over my mouth and hiss, "Lucaro! Oh my goodness!"

"Niri, I hear them. They want release."

Lup explodes from his poke ball in order to chirrup at my feet, _Okay, okay, I think he's being just a little bit dramatic, Niri. I can't hear their voices from all the way over here, so I dunno if he could either. Plus, pokemon are pretty good at hiding from humans. You're a loud bunch. If we don't want anything to do with you, we will have absolutely nothing to do with you._

Lucaro's mouth scrunches. "I... I was trying to make it easier for Niri."

The piplup blinks. _Ah. In that case, yes, Niri, those pokemon are being abused and we should end their suffering._

"You are _both_ the worst." A reluctant chuckle squeezes out of my tightened chest. "Let's get this over with."

Lucaro sidles up next to me like he's my best pokemon (which I guess he technically is even though he isn't _my _pokemon), and we hike down a small slope. My feet threaten to skid down and take me with them. My fingers anchor around Lucaro's arm, and with a stifled snort, he abides. Lup dances around my toes before he slips and falls himself.

We reach the bottom. The children look up as our shadows pass over them. "W-Whoa," one utters, gazing upon me and my powerful bodyguard of sorts. "Lookit _that_ thing. I wanna beat it."

The child's friends chirrup afterwards, filling the air with battle claims.

"_I_'ll beat the big blue dog first!"

"_Noooo_ you will _not_ because _I_ am gonna beat him up into next year! Then I'll toss him like _SMACK_ into yesterday and punt him so hard he'll be in the newspaper for _five thousand forevers _ever!"

"What if he's a girl though," another pipes up.

The other kid stares back, disgruntled. "I-I-I, uhhhhhh, then I'll do the same things except he's a girl."

The children rise up and parade around me, each's claim louder than the last.

Lucky me, the unspoken rule of a pokemon battle is that the winner receives a prize from the loser. _Luckier_ me, my "big blue dog" could punt literally any of these tykes and any of their pokemon into the depths of eternity if he wasn't such a softy.

"Okay, _oooo_kay, step back, kiddos." I ward them off, waving my palms out to them. "I will take you on one at a time so that everyone gets a fair chance. If my lucario gets knocked out by any of you, I'll even heal him up for the next one." Lucaro tosses me a pained glance and mutters _I am not anyone's lucario but my own_ to himself. None of the children notice. "Does that sound good?"

Cheering meets my rather standard set of rules. They form a makeshift line, screaming obscenities at the ones in front of them.

The first child stands up tall, his pair of bright green booties mashed into the earth, and out he tosses a small black-and-white bird. Starly.

"Starboo, goooooooo!" he cries while Lucaro forms a ball of blue aura with his paws. Everyone stares up at him, then stares up at me, whose lips have yet to move. Somehow I get the feeling that I shouldn't intercede with Lucaro's battle strategy.

_Maybe it's because yours always suck_, Lup offers, and I think about strangling him. At least nobody else hears him.

While lithe little Starboo flits about the small tree-lined arena, her tiny wings hardly capable of holding her body in the air for long, Lucaro's aim grows closer and closer, his ball glowing brightly in a sheen of cobalt against his face.

Then _whoosh_ he sends it flying—and Starboo hits the ground like a lost comet.

Bootie-wearing baby's eyes are so wide that he hands us an extra dollup of cash "for effect", as he puts it. He politely picks up his bird and steps back as another contestant takes his place: a little girl this time, her hair up in messy braids.

She swallows, then shouts, "If _you_ think you can beat me... well, you can't! So there! I've _never_ lost a battle before, _ever_!"

Lucaro's eyes meet mine, painfully bright. He does not want to cause her first loss.

I bite into my cheek and glance at Lup, but he shakes his head. _Hey, you promised them a big blue dog. I am a tiny blue flightless bird. The thrill is not the same, Niri._

In a bit of flair, she twirls two poke balls off of her fingers. Maybe that's why she always wins. Out comes a pair: plusle and minun, red and blue bunnies. Lucaro gazes upon them, his face pale with emotion, and he shuts his eyes as he lands a karate chop on the first, sending it down to its little bunny butt.

The blue one, minun, releases a squeal, then shoots out a spark per its master's command. It hits Lucaro, and his complexion doesn't shift whatsoever. It's like hitting a freaking wall. Another chop of his arm, and the other collapses. Lucaro whispers, returning to my side, "I feel like I've failed everyone I ever loved for the sake of..."

When a child glances up at him, I growl his name, and he shuts off his voice. Not that anyone would believe a kid who apparently heard a talking blue dog, but we don't need the chance of that problem arising. Not with everything else going on, such as our utter poorness and my missing best friend.

The little girl gazes at her fainted pokemon, then carefully draws them into their poke balls. "W-Wow... I've never lost before. That was kind of a rush..."

She hands me a larger sum than the last kid—probably won a lot more than little Starboo.

Well thank goodness for children and their charity.

I ask, "Does anyone else want to try against my big blue dog?"

Lucaro smirks.

The kids notice and gasp. One of them whispers under their breath, "It's like the big blue dog knows what everyone's saying..."

Then another squeals. "Hey! That's not fair! Is he reading our thoughts, you mean lady?"

My cheeks flush. "N-No! No! Not at all! Geez! I am not a cheater! He's just really strong and smart!"

Lucaro's cheeks singe purple. I have to stop myself from hugging his cute fuzzy self.

Clearing my throat, I add, "If you still don't want to fight my lucario, I have a piplup too," and nudge my foot at the stupid flightless bird clinging to my leg. "He's not very strong, but he needs the exercise."

From the back of the small group, one final contestant reveals himself. He's got his hair all long and covering one of his eyes, and it must be extremely itchy underneath the shadow of darkrai-black strands. "Yeah. I'll fight _both_ your pokemon at the same time, yeah? Sooooo... yeah. Get ready."

"Y-Yeah," I choke out, struggling not to let my laughter escape, as Lup and Lucaro move in front of me. Gosh, as... as potentially rude and awful as this is, just picking on children in the outskirts of a forest, I haven't hid this many smiles since when Layke and I were playing checkers back in Nurse Morrow's horrible pokemon center of death.

I'm... ahhh... this is for a good cause. We're gonna use this money towards the faraway, currently unfeasible goal of finding him, saving him, and returning him home. I have no idea how to tell his family, so maybe I just won't—i-if I can recover him, then it's like it never happened anyways.

The boy throws another "yeah" at me, and I break down, forcibly swallowing my cackles, as he releases a pokemon whose shadow suddenly eclipses the sun. With a squeak, I glance up, and it's—a gigantic dragon. A horrible massive dragon with three heads, and like, two of its heads are where its arms should be, and it's got this nasty purple ruff, and it just altogether makes my skin break out in metaphorical hives.

Ah, yes, a flying dragon. Perfect.

Lucaro breaks no sweat, scooting back and summoning another aural sphere within his palms. When the dragon ducks and fires a beam of prismatic light without a gesture from the trainer, Lucaro ducks back and resumes his sphere-building. Lup helpfully pecks the air far below the dragon's body.

"Yeah, it's my dad's hydreigon. Pretty sick, yeah? His name's Arnold, but he doesn't even listen to Arnold, so I just call him Butthead. Pretty funny, yeah."

Well, _shoot_.

Lup coughs. _I think he just used a hyper beam. So he'll be immobile for a little while. Boost me up, will you?_

I shake myself and act as if I've come up with an amazing idea. "Lup, over here!" He waddles over to me, and I lower my outstretched palms so that he can climb right in. I toss him toward the dragon demon, and he sprays a fluttery array of bubbles. They pop innocently, leaving nary a scratch, but I have absolutely no other plans, so up I toss him again, and again, until the dragon begins to move and his eyes follow after the annoyance: me.

Throwing Lup to the ground—he scowls—I grab my bar and hoist it above my head. Arnold's sick dragon eyes strain upon me, even as Lup hurries to his waddley toes, even as Lucaro fires ball after ball of incredible blue power at his side. Then the three dragon heads' maws fill with horrifying bright color, and the blood begins to rush to my cheeks.

_FRICK—_

I duck back behind a tree and swing my club like it means anything. Two of the beams strike the tree, shaking the trunk and convincing me that my death is nigh, but my swinging metal bar strikes a strand of the hyper beam and sends it back at the dragon. It catches around a wing. With a horrible, rampant screech, the hydreigon crashes upon the ground, still awake but certainly, massively angry.

Some kids scream for foul play, but the boy just chuckles. "I think Butthead thinks _you're_ a pokemon."

I think it is time to panic. "LUCARO!" I squeak. "TRY TO GAIN HIS ATTENTION!"

"I—" Lucaro whimpers. "I'm trying..."

In the midst of my hysterical crying, none of the children hear Lucaro, but they laugh a whole darn lot at the very quiet tears streaming down my pathetic face. Maybe I should charge them for the freaking show and make some cheap extra bits of cash off of their entertainment. The longer they laugh, the harder my gut curdles. A part of me wants to just—to just—

Keebae flashes before my mind, Keebae and the cut on her forehead, the cut that I...

No, no no... they're just children. They're just children, just selfish babies that don't know any better...

_Niri, stop thinking about yourself._

I gasp, look up, and watch as Lup drills relentless holes into the hydreigon's still body. Then—just as sudden—the monster takes to haphazard flight while Lup is perched on his back. Squawking, Lup attacks him again and again from behind the three heads, drilling holes, spewing bubbles, attacking and attacking in this nasty crapshoot that chips pathetically away at Arnold's health. The child watches his dad's pokemon writhe as the agony grows hotter and harder, and the psychopath baby giggles.

When I step out of my hiding place, a catch of light blooms overhead. It's in the opposite direction of the midmorning sun, like a—like a second sun, but brighter, whiter.

Then I gasp again when my eyes hit my piplup. The light engulfs him, then bends his body, forcing him outward, stretching his wings and head and feet and chest.

As the light grows whiter, stronger, suddenly it dims, and behind it is left a slightly larger flightless bird.

_Lup..?_

He blinks. _Oh I think I evolved. Aw, sweet. Lup the prinplup at your service, milady._ Then he goes back to drilling holes into the hydreigon's neck, and somehow it's—more pronounced. His weight, his power, it's... it means something more powerful than it ever did before. Quickly, perhaps in shock, Arnold bends to Lup's weight, and then he crashes once more into the ground.

Lucaro steps over and tentatively jumps, then kicks at one of the slow-moving heads.

Arnold grows still.

The children stare, and they stare, and they stare. Lup awkwardly gets up and waddles over to me. I send him into his poke ball. Lucaro steps close to me, his paw hovering by my shoulder as if to pull me aside in a moment's chance of danger.

Then, in a rush of symphony, unanimous clapping erupts before us.

"THAT WAS THE COOLEST THING I EVER SAW! THE REST OF MY LIFE IS GONNA BE DOWNHILL FROM HERE ON OUT!"

"OH MY GOD I THINK I'M CRYING! I DIDN'T EVEN CRY WHEN MY LITTLE SISTER WAS BORN."

"WWWWHOOOAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"I WANT A LUP! I WANT A LUP! I WANT FIVE HUNDRED, ACTUALLY!"

Then there's the boy whose dad owns the hydreigon. His lips smear into a magenta smirk. "Didn't see that one coming. Pretty cool, pretty cool." He upends one of his pockets and hands me the stack of cash—plus a couple bug shells and a broken poke ball—within. "Yeah, that was worth it."

The kids go around and throw loose change at me like I'm some sort of fountain—a few even make wishes—and we wave goodbye to one another.

One they're far behind us, the trail spreads long and wide and empty. Trees ring our vision, and grass meets our feet, and our pathway eases along a leisurely expanse.

"What did you think?" I ask.

Lucaro shudders. "Many ugly thoughts. I did not like the child who used the father's pokemon. Arnold... did not like the child. You made him angrier, because your pokemon listened to you. Because you laughed... He just wanted to sleep, after your pole deflected his hyper beam."

"D-Dang..." Man, I can't feel good about anything I accomplish with this guy around. Using my bar as an easy cane, I shake it. "Do you think, with this thing, I'm almost like a pokemon? That seemed to be what the freaking hydreigon thought."

My companion's brows raise. "I do not know. One would expect humans to be able to defend themselves without their pokemon, but it appears that they rely too heavily on our unearthly powers. I think... I think it is a good idea to be able to defend yourself, in case your pokemon—and I—cannot."

We continue down the sunlit pathway in a contemplative silence.

"Well, uh, Lup evolved, so that's cool." I snort. "He looks like a prepubescent penguin, but _hey_."

Lucaro cannot stifle his laughter. That makes me feel a little better about things. We might not know exactly where we're going, but I got a lucario to chuckle in a bout of low, barking laughter, so there.

And we have money. And we have sweet money.

"Where d'you think those kids are from?"

Lucaro scoffs. "Somewhere rich and halfway wedged in the forest. Somewhere... _scenic_, as the humans call it."

"Okay..." I shrug. "Well, I feel less bad now."

We leave it at that. All we can hope is this path leads us somewhere closer to Layke, or at least somewhere with a vending machine.


	6. An Uneasy Peace

**Yeah, dang... Layke's been inducted with Team Galactic?!**

**Why in the world did Keebae tell him that his best friend had died in the rock avalanche? That's pretty mean! Why would Keebae do something so mean?!**

**Once again thanks for the really freakin kind comments, OMG! You said you write stories, but you reply on here as a guest comment. Do you post any of them on fanfiction?**

Chapter 6: An Uneasy Peace

Lucaro's paw nudges my arm. I stop, glance over to him. His gaze has been overcome with this oddly cobalt color, blue like his fur, morphing his amber gaze to something muddled, borderline brown. "I believe... if we go this way..." He takes a preliminary step and his eyes explode with color. "Yes. Yes, this way."

"Pff... Lucaro, what's 'this way'?" I ask. Despite my lack of explanation, I follow him off the path and into a beaten-down line of bushes and trod-upon grass. My lucario friend must've found us a little shortcut.

He focuses on mapping out whatever direction it is we need to go in; then his words come out in short, stubby breaths. "Keebae. I sense her aura. The, ah, the aura that I braced onto her. It's this way."

I swallow. "Dude... this won't lead us to, like, Team Galactic's evil secret base, will it? If... If we start walking to some freaky building in the distance, you're gonna have to give it up. I am not here for that." We can't save Layke if we end up like him, after all.

"Ah..." He allows a moment of pause. "I hadn't thought of that. Well... we will just have to see."

I can't argue with that. It's not like there's _not_ a pressure building up in my chest the bluer and bluer Lucaro's eyes glow. It's not like my best friend's face isn't flashing like overblown fireworks in my head with each step we take, closer, closer, of course only _maybe_ but also...

We emerge in a clearing of flowers. I freeze.

The... sheer mass, jewel-like in luster, and the way they dip to the sun in the dusky evening half-light... the gentle cusp of sunlight tucking around the stems and uplifting them in a tender orange sheen...  
Where... are we?

Soft petals flutter against our toes, and I begin the incredibly tricky work of nudging my feet around the stems and hoping to the love of all things good that I don't crush any of them. Lucaro of course can step literally anywhere and the flowers bounce back up, because every single aspect of nature just loves him, I guess. He glances at me once or twice and definitely stifles a crackle of laughter while I try to balance my giant steel bar thing as to not slip down and hit a petaled plant.

Gosh. When his eyes edge over to me again, I glare his way and stick out my tongue. "We can't all be perfect like you, okay."

His cheeks flush violet. "I... I am not perfect, Niri..." Then, in shame, he looks away, his tail drooping down to his feet.

"Whatever." I snort. I'm not helping him feel better. I don't—I don't need to. I've got enough to pay attention to.

The flowers thin out around a small sandy trail up ahead, and I collapse with a sigh once we reach it. Some small scattered cottages blanket around the trail, like they wouldn't dare to touch the flower-anomaly and potentially ruin it.

When I falter, Lucaro's paw nudges by me again, and I let him lead me up the trail and past the houses. A pokemon center, painted pink and covered in flowers to match the precious theme, passes us by, then a couple more houses, some trees here and there, and the sea of flowers follows ever farther. He hisses me to a halt when we breach the flowers and duck beneath a tree whose boughs dip us into shadow.

There's a stump by this tree, and a girl is crouched on the stump. Her knees are tucked up to her chin, her hair slumped over to cover her face.

Lucaro silently mouths _Keebae_ and I have to stifle my chuckle. _Yes, I can tell,_ I mouth back. Who else has her hair cut in that weird diagonal fashion, short on one side and longer on the other? Even her freaking bangs follow the pattern. She makes no sense. What kind of fashion statement...

Rolling my eyes, I shuffle to my feet. Lucaro hisses at me to stop, but then I don't. Soon after, with a reluctance, he rises as well. Now we're both staring down at Keebae.

She has yet to notice us. Utterly silent, hardly even moving but for her hair, slightly, swishing to the pendulum of her breathing. The only source of light that hits her is from the bracelet of blue aura that encircles her wrist.

Lucaro's eyes blaze flaming blue when he gazes upon it. He watches me, waiting for me to do something.

I lean over and tap Keebae's shoulder. Immediately she's up in a flurry of action, hair flipping around her head and whipping her in the face, one hand out in defense while the other straddles her hip for her poke balls, tied to her belt.

Then she recognizes her perpetrators. "Oh... great. It's just you." She slumps into an easier stance, folding her arms across her chest. "What do you want?"

"What do you _think_ we want—" I snap, but Lucaro drowns out my words.

"Have you had a chance to visit your father?"

Keebae's lips pop open; her cheeks blurt red. "I—Uhhh... uhm... d-didn't expect you to remember something as dumb as that, um..." She coughs into her fist, twiddling her hair with a thumb on her free hand. "Yeah. S-Something like that. But now he's disappointed in me and it's all your faults... hhggnnh..."

She's switched out her Galactic uniform—I'd begun to wonder if they were allowed to take the drabby thing off. Keebae's pikachu-yellow summer dress makes me realize that I underestimated her taste in style, because I would steal that from her if it had any hopes of fitting me.

I'm... dumbfounded. She's kind of—_kind_ of—cute. In a kiddish way, yeah, but... when her narrow eyes aren't so tightened up, when she's not in her sizes-too-big Galactic garb, when she lets her body relax... I can see something in her that maybe she doesn't realize she has.

Lucaro speaks up while I stare wordlessly. "Were you not able to learn of Layke's whereabouts, then?"

She swallows. My heart shudders in my chest as I return to the present. This is why we're here. This is why we fought a bunch of kids all morning for something to fill our pockets. Something shaped like hope.

"Yeah... Yeah, he was killed in the rocks."

I flinch; Lucaro's eyes blaze a sudden frightening red. The bracelet glows the same red. "Keebae. That was a lie."

Her brows pitch up so quickly it's comical; I'd laugh if I wasn't ready to freaking _strangle_ this little monster. "Y-Y-Yes it was a lie. J-Juuust checking."

"You are a stealing little _snotrag_," I hiss, and she hides her face in her hands like it'll keep us from seeing the blush as it grows stronger. I've never before met someone with such dark complexion so susceptible to a display of shame across her face.

Keebae mutters, "Don't say that. I'm not a snotrag." Then she continues, speaking into her hands, "Yeah, I saw Layke... and I told _him_ that you died in the rocks."

"KEEBAE WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT—" I explode—

"Yeah, well now he's gonna focus way harder on being a member of Team Galactic, and, like, getting things actually done. Okay, and if he focuses way harder on it, then he'll do way better at his job, and maybe he won't end up like the guys who don't listen, so there. And also maybe he'll be my friend."

She just wants to freaking be his freaking friend doesn't she. What kind of _sorry, nasty, smarmy excuse_ is that.

My voice doesn't rise. It stays lodged stuck in my throat like my expectations. "That is a horrible explanation."

Lucaro sighs. "I agree. But—Niri... at least we know now that Layke is safe, for now."

"Yeah, whatever..." I rub my eyes and scowl into my hand. "Keebae, what in the world is wrong with you?_ Why_ do you think telling people that their friends are dead will get you anywhere in the flipping world? Why do you steal chimchars? Why are you even in this weird marauder group that tries to kill people with gigantic rock avalanches? Don't you have friends or... I don't know, a mom, a non-stolen pokemon, something?"

She promptly flops back onto her tree stump. "I..." Hovers over her breath, face scrunching into yet another ugly scowl. "I mean, yeah, I..." Closes her eyes. "I am doing my absolute best, okay... I...

"H-Have... you heard the story of the pokemon that got turned into a human?"

"The... Keebae, what?" Out of sheer confusion, I sit down in front of her. "Are you gonna elaborate, or just let that hang in between us while I stare up at you and think ugly thoughts about you?" Lucaro winces and sits beside me.

"Don't think ugly thoughts about me," Keebae mumbles, her eyes opening just to stare at the dirt. "It goes like this. Once upon a really long time ago, there were some people who wanted to make the world a wonderful place. They were disappointed that things were so bad, and they decided that they had to be the change they wanted to see, or... whatever.

"They wanted pokemon to be free. They wanted the world to know that pokemon were miserable." I look over and catch Lucaro's eyes widening, softening, allowing the story to shape his heart. It... makes my chest pinch. "So they searched in the wild for a pokemon. When they found the perfect one, they... took her from her home. Then they put her in a machine that molded her physical being into a... human.

"And they were—They were going to take her around the world and tell everyone, look. This girl used to be a pokemon. Listen to what she has to say about humans. She thinks humans are awful. Humans are mean and they have to change. That's what they wanted to do with her. But they were the ones that were awful to her... and what they were doing was so bad, and... I... and I—" She breaks off, clearing her throat.

"I mean, how messed up is that? What a messed up story. Good thing it's... just a story, right?"

Suddenly her bracelet flares red. Keebae squeaks and stares down at it. "I—I didn't mean to say that."

Lucaro's misty reddened eyes gaze up on her. "Keebae... what happened next? What happened to the pokemon-turned-human girl who was mistreated by the terrible humans?"

"Uhhh..." She bites her lip. "If I tell a lie, then you'll know it's not true..." Releases a breath, staring down at us, enraptured by her freaky fairy tale. Except it's... apparently _not _a fairy tale. It apparently happened. It was a lie when she labeled it fake.

What sort of crazy past is Keebae hiding from the world? _She's_ not—is she?

"Are you the pokemon who—"

She hisses, cutting me off. "I am _not_ the pokemon who was turned into a human girl." Lucaro and I stare at her bracelet, but it stays blue. So it's the truth. "I just... happened to be there when it happened." Still blue. "I had _nothing_ at all to do with the story." _Blam_—As red as her stupid embarrassed face. "Okay, I didn't do anything bad to her." Back to blue. "Now can we please stop talking about this."

"But..." Lucaro—Lucaro's crying? When did he start crying? O-Oh gosh. I awkwardly pat his arm. "But Keebae, I must know what happened to the human girl. Was she able to turn back into her original form again? Is... Is she still estranged from her family? Is she... still in suffering? She has not... She was not... k-killed... in her suffering... was she?"

Keebae stares down at him, and I realize that there's something other than her usual scorn laced within her expression, something small, something vulnerable, something she's been scared to show us until now. "I... I'm sorry. I don't know. The last I saw her, she was okay, but... that was a really long time ago. I was pretty young when it happened... and after I—uh—after I did what I did, whatever that was... I wasn't allowed to see her again.

"I think she's okay. But I don't know."

Lucaro releases a long, slow, hesitant breath that shuffles out of his throat like a dying soul. "I pray for her safety." Then he gently shakes himself. "My name, Keebae... it is Lucaro."

Her brow furrows. "Lu...caro. Okay.

Then her eyes go back to me and my dumbfounded stare. "What, Niri? Am I still a nasty ch-chimchar-stealing snotrag?"

My eyes fall to her lap—where her tiny fiery chimp lies, curled up. He must've come out while we were listening to her story.

He's... Gosh, is he comforting her? This little purring lump of orangey chimchar... Keebae's hands curl up around his fur, around his head, and he stays comfy in her warmth, and it really makes me feel awful about like five hundred of my Keebae preconceptions.

Somewhere in the very pit of my jacket pocket, Lup says, _She's just trying to win you over._

_Sh-Shut up, you stupid piplup._ I raise a shaking hand to wipe back the sudden sneaking tears that lace my cheeks. _You don't know anything about authenticity._

Lup, hurt, mutters, _Niri, I'm not a piplup anymore. Remember? When I saved you from that horrible giant dragon Arnold?  
_

_I—_I close my eyes. _I am not in a state to say any of the right things today. I'm uh, I'm sorry, Lup._ Then I look up and face the girl who I have been kind of awful to this whole time that I've known her, this girl who's in this crazy star-obsessed organization who probably never opens up her tightly-clenched heart. "I'm sorry, Keebae. I've judged you. Wrongly. Kind of a lot."

Her eyes widen, and her cheeks smolder. "I—Uh... It's f-f-fine!" Pouting, she folds her arms over her chest and glares down at me from her tree stump. "But stop calling me a chimchar-stealer, because that professor guy was just gonna leave poor Chimpy in his poke ball for... a long time. I don't—he doesn't talk like Lucaro, or anything, but he looked so miserable until I let him out of his ball and told him he wouldn't be stuck in that ugly old lab anymore."

Geez... really? "Maybe he's just as rebellious as you." I thought the chimchar was gonna go to a lab assistant or something. But—Well—I guess a lab assistant would spend much of their time inside of the lab anyways.

"I'm not rebellious!" Keebae squeaks. "I'm just, I'm just doing my best, okay! My livelihood just makes me look rebellious! Maybe a lot rebellious! But—But, you tell me, what else am I supposed to do?"

Lucaro and I share a glance. "Uhhh..." I start, since it's not like the lucario knows much about teenage girls. "Get a job somewhere? Stay at a pokemon center until you can piece your life back together? Go life a normal life while you're still young?"

I ignore Lup's quip of _Niri you're not that much older than her_ and open my mouth, only for Lucaro to cut me off.

"You could come along with us! You do not _have_ to stay with that scary organization, Keebae! Niri allowed me to join her—why don't you join us?"

Lucaro—Oh, Lucaro... I release a long, drawn out sigh. Nudging him closer to me, I whisper into his ear, "If she's with us, how are we supposed to save Layke?"

He bristles. "If she is with us, then she will not be miserable with _them._ Can you not see the quiet pain in her face, Niri? We cannot simply ignore her own suffering in favor of fishing out Layke, not when she is so... sad, broken, by her ugly human experiences."

"Yeah but..." I shift over to him, my voice sharpening. "She's the one who joined them in the first place. She kind of chose this for herself." I raise it. "And who—who _knows_ what's going on in that crazy delinquent group. She's our key _in_, our means of freeing Layke and maybe stopping whatever it is they're up to."

Lucaro suddenly winces, injured. "Niri, you are not listening to me, just restating your reasons."

"Because my reasons are good—"

"But you are not considering mine, nor hers." He gazes over to Keebae, my eyes following, only for the both of us to realize that Keebae is no longer there. "Ah—Wh-Where did she..." His fractured gaze falls. I catch, swimming in the stream of pain and confusion, a sudden blaring red smear.

Nudging him, eyeing his excruciating expression, I say, "Lucaro. Your eyes... Wherever she is, she's lying her butt off right now."

"She didn't... all the way back at their secret base... is she?" He furrows his brow, then leans into himself, catching his head in a paw. "Lying about... where she went and what she saw?"

I sigh. "Whatever she's doing, she must be protecting us from them." This... weird, tiny part of my heart burns at the notion. Keeping us safe from her own creepy boss... "Geez, I trust they don't hurt her. With her bracelet going off and all..."

"We will just have to hope," he murmurs, "but... there is not much else we can do about it now. Niri, are you not hungry? We have been walking all day on little to eat save what we found in the morning."

"I mean—well—yeah..." I close my eyes and feel myself slowly relax.

We have the money now, so we might as well use it.

Lucaro stands, and I follow. We reach the sandy trail, and I use my pole to steady my wavering gait. Under my breath, as the shadows blanket about us and tiny shining stars stud the sky, I mutter, "Sorry, Lucaro. Layke's kind of my priority though. I just don't have your heart. Keebae put herself in her position. I don't really care if she gets herself out of it."

A soft breath by my ear. Lucaro's stopped, and he's gazing into me. "You were kind to me in my need. I know... Keebae appears to be a vice for the sake of Layke, currently, but she is a person with her own problems as well. I...

He breaks off. Sighs. Starts again. "Niri, can you ask the locales about the story? The story of the pokemon who was turned into a human. I want... I want to know if anyone else has heard of it."

"Oh! Yeah. Sure. Let's do that. Maybe we'll see a little more into Keebae's weird head."

Finally Lucaro's eyes flare, and the aura has faded away to his natural amber. "Maybe."

I wonder where she is right now. What in the world she's doing. Why she... was honest with us... out of everyone she knows, including her crazy Galactic family.

I really freaking wonder about the story. Who's the girl, if not her? _How_ is _she_ connected to it?

But we just don't know. Too many questions. Too many questions, and I'm too hungry and frustrated (and maybe too stupid) to figure any of them out.


	7. The Stark Laboratory

**Too many questions hahaha**

**Do not worry. I hate mysteries that tell you nothing until it all gets dumped on you at the very end. This will not be one of those stories, haha.**

**We will meet this "pokemon-turned-human" soon enough~**

**OMG—Ah I see! I made an account when I was really young, like 12? I signed myself up with my own email that I made all by myself, and then I pretty much started writing from then on out. I was using my dad's computer to write for a while though. He got sick of it and eventually got me a laptop, hahaha.  
Hmm, maybe you know who the person is~ We'll just have to see. (Don't... get your hopes up? haha)**

Chapter 7: The Stark Laboratory

_Layke_

The dark cloak of night has fallen; despite the crowd, we glide through the shadows. From the cavern to the outdoors, there's hardly a change of lighting. Nary a soul materializes to question us, to stop us. I wish I knew what exactly we were supposed to do, but only the redhead by my side was given the "express permission" to the secrets of the mission. Freaking... What am I gonna do with the knowledge if they told me? Literally nothing.

Mars keeps my pace, treading _just_ in front of me. I have no idea how she does it in inches-high heels. Niri never bothered with heels because she said they felt danger—

It's never gonna stop hurting, is it. Every time she flashes into my mind, the pain ripples through me with a violent lurch.

Mars. I try to steer my sick, lonely mind. Mars's shoes. Mars's impeccable balance. The red-lipsticked smear that slashes across her mouth like an afterthought.

Suddenly she draws to a halt, and the small horde of grunts from behind silently cease in robotic unison. "Stay here, you." She points at me. Probably doesn't remember my name. "I need to check something."

"Check what?" I ask. Because I can. Because nobody else will dare to.  
Because none of them flipping _talk_. Do they even breathe? Are they actually robots?

"Pertinent information outlining the mission."

She begins to move, and I stumble forward—my hand eclipses her wrist.

I tug her back. "Wait. Please wait."

Her arm freezes up beneath my grip—but she doesn't move. "What is it you could possibly wish for, _grunt?_"

"I just, I..." I hover, my voice lodging painfully up in my throat. "I just wanna know why _they_ don't talk. Why you single me out like they—like they won't hear me. Why _none_ of them act like people. Like they're freaking... I don't know... robots, or just super emotionless."

To my last words, her eyes sharpen, narrow, as a light gathers deep inside from I have no idea where. "A prior experiment of dear Cyrus's. A successful experiment. I'd watch out if I were you, _grunt_..." And I don't know what it is about the word, but it's like her heel has been wedged up into my chest, and she's hacking away at my heart.

"Perhaps you won't have to worry about it. Dear Cyrus has been searching for someone like you. How would you like to become... ahh, Mars, Jupiter—Oh. Saturn. I'd see that. The blue hair... it matches well."

I open my mouth, then shut it. What in the world do I say to her? "Was... there a Mercury or a Venus before you?"

Her brows raise, incisive little red blades attached to her freakishly sinister face. "Yes. There was a Mercury _and_ a Venus before me. They did not please dear Cyrus. Isn't that right..?" Her eyes steadily roll off of me and disappear into the mob of blank faces behind us.

Those red marks shimmer from around their necks, half-hidden by the collar of their Galactic clothing. I hadn't noticed it in the fluorescent light of the Team Galactic base, but... the marks definitely glow, like the rings of a planet.

_Saturn..._

Pursing my lips, I ask, "Why are you answering all my questions now? You're being... nice." I thought bad guys weren't supposed to be, uh, nice.

Mars smirks, her lipstick a red cut across her face. "Maybe sometimes I like to talk too, and maybe I have an inkling of a hope that you'll turn out better than Mercury and Venus. Your pokemon... they hold promise of a bright future, a future perhaps bright enough to illuminate dear Cyrus's everlasting dream of a world in which all goes perfectly, meeting his vision of a wondrous eternity.

"You may be what we needed to finally see the mission through, Layke." Oh. I guess she did remember my name. "Now stay here and be good. We wouldn't want to lose you and your potential now. I'll just be a moment."

She disappears through the trees, taking the ghost-like marching of the blank-faced grunts with her.

Up ahead, the hills slope downward and meet in a copse of scraggly trees. Behind them lies some sort of dormant mechanism, a massive laboratory. The lights have dimmed in the windows. The only sound is the click of Mars's shoes and the following of the grunts as she saunters into the gilded cusp of moonlight, leaving me to watch them all melt away like ghosts in the darkness.

When she's gone far enough ahead, I try and poke one of the grunts lagging behind the group. "So... uh... any of you wanna tell me what's going on?"

Nope. Nothing. They march on, leaving me to wait in front of the lab like a scruffy old watchog. "Well, cool. I guess I'll just stare at the freaking stars and count them until I fall asleep." Niri used to—_Frrrghhhh._

It... _hurts_.

Breathing through my pain, a visceral wound in my chest, I step up to a sturdy tree and lean into it, releasing a long, empty breath. Then another, and another, as I wait for something to change... but the silence stays the same. The same stars stare coldly down upon me, their lights prickling my skin. I drag the sleeve of my new shirt over my eyes, my wet eyes, but too soon, I can't see again. My surroundings grow blurry, meaningless, a smeary canvas revealing my life as a muddled gray puddle.

Slowly I slide down, letting my head fall against the trunk of the tree. I hum softly to myself, to keep the silence at bay, to keep the world from falling apart all around me. Something to hang onto. I pretend I don't recognize the tune in my mouth, I pretend like I've never heard it before, like I've never heard anyone I ever cared about sing it, and somehow I can manage to hold it. Somehow the pain grows distant, and I feel myself rising, looking over the sad, sagging body of my regrets.

Then a voice cracks through the unending abyss of nothing.

"Layke!"

"A-Ah!" I gasp; suddenly I'm breathing, coughing. I slog to my feet, leaning heavily into the tree. When I look up, I meet Keebae's narrow gaze. "Wh...What. What do you want." Freaking... snuck up on me. She's in this weird yellow dress, and a glowy blue bracelet lights up around her wrist.

Her eyes follow mine, and her hand cups around the bracelet. Only bleak waves of light break through the gaps between her fingers.

She screws her lip up at me. "What are you doing out here?"

I gesture behind me, toward the building where Mars slipped into. Her brows raise pointedly; a breath of hot air escapes through her clenched teeth.

"Geez... there again? That stupid... rrrrrrrrgh." As if this explains everything, she stomps one foot, hard, into the dirt.

My eyes traverse the sleeping laboratory. A light or two winks on within, painting the grass outside with highlighted streaks. "What's... in there?"

"Valley... Windworks." I look back at her, and she bites into her lip, the words I'd been searching for spilling out profusely. "We hijacked the dump a few weeks ago. There's still some workers inside, actually. Very useful on our part. We got them to do Dad's—er, Cyrus's—work, _and_ they can't tell anyone about what they're doing for us. If they do, we said we'd destroy Floaroma town... because... _get it_... that's where they live. It's the closest town, duh." She twirls with a strand of her white hair, a pleased little smirk escaping across her mouth.

"Okay... and what does you and your dress have to do with it? I thought that creepy Cyrus guy said—"

"He just said to leave! He didn't say where to go, okay. He didn't say I couldn't..." Her eyes finally fall to her feet, and a sigh eases out of her. "I needed some time to myself. He keeps... He keeps... He's my dad, but sometimes I just try my hardest and he doesn't get it and it—and it makes me mad. But... he's my dad, so, whatever..."

The bracelet glows a little funny red. What a cool bracelet. I wish I had a bracelet that switched between blue and red. I mean, I'd just want it for the blue, since blue was Niri's favo—

I shake my head. Keebae's wide deceitful eyes glance up at me. "What?"

"N-Nothing. I can't... I can't believe Niri..."

A wince breaks over her. "Oh. Yeah. It's too bad she died." The bracelet grows stronger, redder, the color flowing through her fingers despite her attempts to stifle it. "I'm, uh, I'm real sorry about that. She was... She seemed like a nice friend."

"Y-Yeah..."

And then a black hole of silence.

What can anyone say to that? I lost her. _I_ lost her. Gosh... All I can hope is that _Saturn_ won't let anything happen to anyone else... in... in her honor. I hope Saturn's stronger. Stronger than Layke—stronger than _I _could ever freaking dream to be. Even when we were together, I... I never...  
The lucario we _barely knew_ kept her safer than I ever did...

I catch Keebae's lips moving. "What was that?"

She blinks. "Oh I just... was wondering who went with you to the lab."

"A bunch of grunts..." I shrug. "Mars." Speaking of weird planetary commander names. "Wait—Wait, Keebae. Did you know Mercury and Venus? Mars said... they used to be around, or something. _You_ weren't—were you?"

Under her breath she mutters "what is it with people thinking I'm more important than I am today..." Before I get a chance to ask what in the world she means, she blurts out: "_No_. And I don't wish I was. Being Cyrus's kid is much better. _They_ got canned after they totally failed to capture a mythical being for our research. Ruined our one chance at snatching it—haven't had one since.

"Plus, there was... well... they were, uh, in love, or something, I guess, and Cyrus didn't like all the... affection. At all. It uh... It made him..." She loses her breath, shaking her head frantically. "Well, it spurned his experiment, that's all."

"Ex...periment?"

Her eyes widen. "You don't wanna know, I swear it to you." A brilliant flash of blue from her bracelet. That must be annoying to have on in the middle of the night. "Just be good. Be like me. Don't let them know that I'm helping you, okay? They might not like that you know more than you should. Be _good_. Be good and listen, and do everything they say right so that I get a fr—" Her cheeks explode with crimson. "So that my hard work of trying to educate you up doesn't go bad." And then her bracelet ripples a sudden, flashing transformation, blue-to-purple-to-faint-red.

"I've, ummm... I'm on an undercover mission, L-Layke. I didn't want you to know, but that's the truth." Now the red is even brighter, almost like the bracelet is trying to tell me something. Catching my gaze, Keebae ducks her wrist behind her back. "That's what the dress is all about. So I'll... I'm gonna go back and report on that now. If Cyrus asks you about it for some reason, that's what I was doing. Don't tell him I needed some time to myself because I... uhm... I was definitely lying about that. Sorry."

Her lips pinch around the corners.

She's clearly not telling the truth on this one. I might be dumb, but... _oh_. Oh, she wants me to cover for her. She wants me to tell Mars, if she asks, that Keebae didn't do anything wrong.

My eyes snap to her moving lips. "Be careful, and stuff. Mars is kind of crazy. Just do everything she says and you'll be okay. Uh... see you later."

And she's gone, running off into the shadows.

I wait for a long time, long enough that little peeks of pink dawn begin to streak along the rim of the horizon. It's late and I'm tired, and the longer I stare into the trees in the distance, the more I see visions of my... of Niri. The taste of her name makes my heart thunder, harder, harder, until I can hardly breathe. I just see her—the long, dark blue hair, blue like the sky as it reaches dusk and stars gently speckle it, highlights of brilliance. Her blue eyes, her full lips—filled with a smile or snarky comment, I'm not sure which. She's got these gorgeous red flowers tucked into her head, and her hair still has that braid I put in for her. Her tan skin shines, her curvaceous body as freaking pretty as it was the last time I saw her, before the rocks tore her apart.

And she's beautiful... but I close my eyes and remind myself that she's not real. She can't be. No matter the way the sun glimmers through her eyes, the way her hair flows in the breeze, the way the lucario behind her helps her down a path—it's not real. It can't be.

It's just a beautiful dream of what I absolutely ruined.

There's a hand on my shoulder—I look up and see Mars.

"Oh, good. You're still here. It... took longer than I thought." Her red eyes slip from me and glare into the steadily-rising sunlight. "There was a mistake. The workers will pay for it." Her pale fingers tighten, digging into my skin.

Her sharp eyes check around the laboratory. "Could've sworn there was another perpetrator," she growls under her breath, "unless he was stupid enough to go in alone... Whatever. They won't find anything that wasn't previously destroyed.

"But... until then..." Her attention returns to me. I try to follow along, but there's too many little assumptions that I know nothing about. "Your turtwig was able to evolve, correct? I have an idea. There are some legendary creatures we attempted to capture, long ago, but we lost them due to inefficient personnel.

"I believe we will be in need of your assistance, Layke."

The blood rushes to my face.

Me. They need me.

I swallow the flush of remembrance, the vision of another girl who needed me once, and I say, "Let's go, then."

We're gonna capture pokemon... that probably don't want to be caught.  
Lucaro's stupid lucario mug pops into my head, but I...  
No. No. This is all I have now. It doesn't matter what Lucaro thinks.

Cyrus's perfect world. That's what we want. Maybe it can bring Niri back... and even if it can't, what else am I going to put faith into?

The world is imperfect. I've seen and lived through it.

So let's... let's fix it.

_Niri_

In the early guidance of the morning light, Lucaro aides me down yet another twisty hill. "Gosh," I grunt, leaning hard into him, "I hate how hard this is. Why can't paths just be normal?"

The lucario chuckles from somewhere just above my ear. "You may be tired from all of our walking."

"I..." My breath hisses out. "You're not wrong. My physical condition is nowhere near as perfect as yours." This stupid blue dog could probably trek the whole region in a matter of days, without a single stop.

"So... Lucaro, where do you think we should go next?" I pull out the map we got from the nice Nurse Joy in the center. My finger tentatively circles around the top left corner, marked as Floaroma. "We're way over here. Apparently, if I'm remembering what Layke told me from forever ago... there are gym leaders here"—the town just to the right of us, Eterna—"and here"—the one next over, Veilstone—"and also here"—sprinkling my fingers over the majority of Sinnoh's south. "I heard there was a really cool water one somewhere else, too. I am definitely interested in that man."

Peering over my shoulder, Lucaro meets my eyes with a shrug. "I don't know. We would prefer a well-experienced leader, correct? Do we know anything about who has been a gym leader and for longer?"

"Uhhhhh..." I glare at the colored blocks denoting cities on the map. They tell me nothing. "No idea. Probably should've asked Nurse Joy while we were still in the town. I guess we could go back, but..."

The lucario sighs. It's... weird, to hear a pokemon release meaningless breaths and watch him hang his resolute head on his exasperation. "I do not want to either. It was unsettling how little they knew of the story."

"These flowers are cool though." I point at the big red ones tucked into my hair.

Lucaro gives me an affirmative nod. "They have to do with the deity of Floaroma who looks over the... ah, nature, was it? That is why the town was so full of flowers. The mythical guardian, so the story goes, planted them there."

I shrug. "I wonder what'd happen if the guardian went away. Would anyone notice?"

"I do not know."

My head falls, and I shove into Lucaro's side. He tries dragging me a step or two, then falters and glances to me. "Niri?"

"It's just... We know so little. We know like... like _nothing_. And I guess Keebae was useful, but it almost feels like she's telling us things that don't connect to what's going through our lives right now. This is... rrrrrrgh, it's frustrating!"

We stop for a moment. He waits, gives me a chance to wipe my face and breathe out my troubles.

"It is frustrating."

"Yeah... Well, thanks, Lucaro."

"Yes, of course." He turns to continue down the scraggly path, only to pause. "Niri, what is that?" I scoot up behind him and glance around at the looming structure just off the trail. White, kind of dulled by years of sun beating down over it. This funky smell radiates from it, something like unwashed lab-coats or the sweat of incredible hard effort going to waste.

"Wanna go check it out?"

Hah, if Layke was here, he would've already been strolling on over to it.

To Lucaro's mutter of "okay, but be careful", we make our way beneath the laboratory's shadow, crawling up to its walls. Then we just sort of sneak in through the front door which was left unlocked for people like us to slip on in, for some reason. Not that we're complaining.

Harsh white light greets us, blaring down overhead. I grasp hold of my metal bar and make headway with it. Lucaro keeps the back guarded, his swift gaze covering over each direction that isn't the front. A long, white hallway beckons us forward. Parts of it have been dyed in mysterious splotches—pale burgundy, bright crimson, an inexplicable cobalt.

As we pass by them, I comment, and Lucaro mutters, "I feel incredible residual waves of energy from these places, but I cannot tell what they are. Something... synthetic? Human-made?"

We continue onward. As of yet, literally no one has launched out of the shadows to stop us. What is going on.

"Do you... Lucaro, do you think that pack of Galactic grunts had anything to do with this dump?"

"Ah." He hums. "Perhaps so. That would explain where all of the laboratory's personnel have disappeared to."

We'd seen a whole gaggle of them running through the trees on our way down the trail. No Keebae, unfortunately, but so so many of the grunts, plus a lady with weird bright red hair. They went too fast for us to really react, but... where else could they have come from?

"D-Do you think there are hostages—" and Lucaro doesn't even let me finish, just grabs a fistful of my slicker and surges us forward, through the hallway and past empty rooms until we hit the back chamber.

Ah. This one, of all rooms, has been locked shut. Lucaro aura-slams the thing, and we bust our way through.

The harsh light flickers inside, between spurts of utter blackness and the painful fluorescence. Some tables in the corner were upended, and I catch oozes of the cobalt blue substance leaking out of a shattered glass vault behind them. It—reeks—of unwashed bodies. Coughing, I cover my face with a hand, and Lucaro grips my shoulder as his eyes frantically dart about in search of a threat.

Just a couple people in the corner of the room, flashing with the light of the chamber.

I run over. Lucaro hustles to keep ahead, his aura-filled paws held out in defense. He won't let me get past him. He's... protecting me again.

The people... they're—there's something wrong with them. Blank eyes stare up at us, blank eyes and faces slashed over in this glowing red, the only source of light when the fluorescence disappears.

"What happened?" I gasp, staring upon them, their shredded faces visibly aching with the touch of whatever monster broke into them.

Two people, a woman and man, in smelly lab coats.

But suddenly a voice rips through my aghast silence. "Team Galactic must've trashed the place."

Then another one, in response: "You're right, Flint. They did."

And—_there—_behind the comatose scientists, slumped against a cabinet, is a man. His pale, pale face shifts over to meet my eyes—his an electrifying bright blue. His fluffy blonde hair falls about his face and cushions the sharp edges, and I am definitely not lost in his handsome complexion.

_Niri, stop falling in love with people,_ Lup quips.

_I'm not in love with him. I hardly know him. He's just hot, okay._

_Yeah, well. Chill out. You are staring._

Hissing, I break eye contact with cabinet guy and turn around, only to bump heads with the other man who spoke. Flint.

Groaning into my hands, I eventually peek up at him. He proffers an awkward loping grin. "Geez, sorry about that! Name's Flint." His voice is fast and sharp. "I'm part of the Elite of Sinnoh, but it seems like I'm the only one who genuinely cares about it. Hah. The others are stuffy and..." he lowers his breath and mutters insults that I can't quite make out. Lucaro, hovering by his side, winces.

"What brings you here?" grunts the man on the floor, struggling to stand and eventually giving up on that dream.

I shake my hand, folding my arms over my chest. "I just, ahhhh..." Release a breath. Pinch the bridge of my nose. There's no reason to make something up. "My best friend was kidnapped by Team Galactic. I've been... trying to find him... but I've had no luck so far. My, uh, lucario was interested by this building"—his grimace is freaking priceless—"so I thought to check it out." He mouths over Flint's shoulder _I am not your nor anybody else's lucario._

"Um... do you..." I face the blonde man again, the one with the striking eyes, "do you know what happened to these people?"

Grunting, his teeth gritted and sharp, he hooks his arm around the cabinet's door and forces himself to his feet. Immediately Flint jumps over the table in the way and helps the alluring man up. Compared to him, Flint and his gigantic red afro are a joke—striped shirt, cheeky grin, bright pink cheeks.

Then Flint's hands slip around the man's arms and hold him close, and he whispers "are you okay" to the man, who sighs and nods, his head falling into Flint's shoulder.

And that is when I realize just how _out of the picture_ I am.

_Haha he's never gonna find you hot, Niri._

_Okay shut up Lup you don't have to tell me. I think I know._

The man struggles to meet my stupid stricken gaze. "My name is Volkner. This is Flint. I'm... the gym leader of Sunnyshore City." Releases a breath, relaxes his head for a moment. "They were going to hurt me... but my pokemon deflected their strange whip-like weapon. We... managed to break it. I—I don't know what they're trying to do with it, whatever it was, but it's presumably made these poor scientists unable to respond to... well, to anything.

"And I don't know how to reverse the damage. Now—That's what I know. What is your name?"

"N-Niri," I stumble. "You don't—You don't know anything else?" But _Layke_...

"I... ahh..." Volkner's strength gives out; he exhales sharply as he leans into Flint. "I might. I just, I..."

Flint cuts him off, shaking his head, his afro shuddering. "Let's get you somewhere you can rest." His flaming red eyes avert to meet mine. "Feel free to come with us, Niri. You're one of the only people who's actually trying to figure out what's going on. We need help like yours."

And that is how I find myself hardcore thirdwheeling with two incredibly powerful dudes, plus Lucaro, who is trying to stay silent. So it's almost like it's just me. And I am so freaking awkward.


	8. We Seek the Fatal Truth

**I didn't actually think any of the gym leaders would be important in the story... but uh... now Volkner and Flint are. So... yeah. Stories are crazy. You plan it out like this, and then something comes along and destroys all of your ideas, haha.**

**Anyways, WHAT COULD THIS MEAN? What are the red marks around the Team Galactic necks and why are they also on the scientists' faces? Why do they have no emotions? It can't be, that it has to do with the plot of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, can it? (what? A fanfiction having something to do with the plot of the game it's based off of? No way!)  
**

**OMG—Yeah, I love an interesting story too. I could never write this out to be a "fun adventure story" like all the other pokemon adventure stories where they just beat all the gym leaders and whatever. And thanks for your kind words! I like Lucaro too. He's a fun character. I mean, talking lucario. There is very little to not enjoy.**

Chapter 8: We Seek the Fatal Truth

My new pal Flint and I leave Volkner safely tucked into a corner of the lab on this little cot we find. Flint whispers sweet nothings into his ear while I blankly stare at the wall. It is immensely awkward. Then he leaves a couple fiery pokemon by Volkner's side, and we head out to explore the rest of the broken-down laboratory. The signs on the doors are incredibly misleading, as most doors have legit zero labels and the rest of them have these hacked-on code-looking words like "d0cs" and "recx".

No other leads to follow, so we take d0cs and enter a darkened chamber. The floor is smattered with pages, and the light switch won't flick on. Squinting, Lucaro extends a palm and releases a small aura-ball that bathes the room in a blue glow. Flint's fuzzy brows raise; he mutters, "You have one smart lucario. Didn't have to tell him to do a thing."

From behind Flint's back, Lucaro mutters back, "Yes, I am smart because I did not have to take orders. I could plainly see that the room is without light."

To his grunt, the elite member turns around, his flame eyes piercing me. "Niri, you say something?"

"Oh." I cough. "Oh, no, just thinking aloud."

"Bout what?"

Great. I flush through my tan skin. "I'm wondering if the papers in here will tell us what happened to the scientists."

"Hmmmm..." Flint closes his eyes, head shaking slightly, making his giant afro wiggle. "What a boon that would be. I assume it has something to do with the chain-like weapon that Volky described. The one they wanted to... use on him."

"R-Right, right." It's a freaky thought. Can't begin to understand what that chain is. But first, my mind must account for something else. "Wait, Volky?"

"Heheh. Don't call him that to his face. He hates it." A sly grin creeps up Flint's lip.

I giggle. "Cute." Gosh, Volky's _cute_. It's too bad that he's clearly not into me or, uh, my _type_, but I guess there's not much to be done about it. Ignoring the quips Lup shoots at me from my pocket, I ask, "Flint. Um... how did you find this place? Why are you and Volky even here?"

Before he responds, he sort of gestures ahead. I take his hint and crouch over the ground, poring over sheet after sheet. Whoever threw them all over the tiles like this really wasn't thinking about the consequences. However, the further I delve into the mass of pages, the more I realize that I can't understand a freaking word on them.

They're encoded. It doesn't matter if the papers are discarded out in the open. Flint, picking up on this, mutters, "Shoot... they're smarter than we accounted for. Niri, try searching for other sorts of evidence. I don't think this is gonna help us." Then, once I get up and tramp along the chamber, tracking dirt over the rest of the documents, I catch his voice rising. "Volky and me, we were let in on some rumors from the villagers in Floaroma. Something about a missing father, an overworked friend, things like that.

"By the time we could get here, this is... well, you heard Volky." A soft sigh, and the scrabble of papers as Flint shuffles them around, as if hoping to conjure another clue. "I was checking the perimeter when he slipped in. I dunno how he did it. There were so many grunts around, a whole horde of 'em.

"We've been trying to solve the cases as we get them, but as you can see, we're sorta stretched thin." I duck behind a pair of filing cabinets, locating a hidden niche of supplies. Flint's voice reverberates along the metal corridor before it reaches me. "There used to be more of us. Maylene of Veilstone, Crasher Wake of Pastroia..." A wince. "Cynthia."

I gasp, stubbing my foot on a cabinet. "Cynthia? As in _the_ Sinnoh Champion? Wh-What—"

"I don't know." His rushed, hushed response meets my exasperation with such calm that my throat shuts down entirely. "I don't know what happened to her. The other elites, they're all freaking snobs just in it for the title and the academia that supports their level of expertise. Fancy dinners and the whatnot. It's disgusting, but it's just so hard to become part of the elites that it seems we're stuck with those pompous asses—ah, 'scuse the language—those _jerks_ who win the titles from their lineage. Cynthia, though—She's like me. We both came from practically nothing. I'm an orphan. She had a single overworked mother. It's... yeah, she's kinda like a sister to me. And I... Volky and I don't know what happened, but she's gone missing too. She's the first one who went missing.

"I don't know what Team Galactic's doing, but I'm terrified for Cynthia. The longer we take, the more I worry. Seems like they can get away with anything now that the Champion's outta their way."

Fighting my tightened throat, I swallow and rasp, "Flint, that's... I mean, that's the same with me. Layke was—we, I mean, I _think_ he was kidnapped, and now I can't find him." Remembering myself, I sift through the appliances in the corner of the room, successfully locating a key-ring. Who just leaves a perfectly good key-ring in a pile of junk? Maybe they were in a hurry to hide it when Volky broke in.

I pocket the key-ring and emerge from the shadows. "I got a bunch of keys."

"What?" Flint stares up at me, his pale brow furrowed. "All the doors are unlocked already, though. What're we gonna do with a bunch of bunk keys?"

"Well, maybe they aren't for the doors?" I shrug, pulling it out and shaking it. Lucaro surfaces beside me from his role of guarding the door and checks the keys, staring into them with aura-rimmed eyes. The sprawling confusion across his blue dog face tells me just how much he knows. I snort and return them to my pocket before he's done looking at them, and he tosses a petty scowl my way. While Flint rummages a little more with the floor-paper, I stick out my tongue at the lucario. Flustered, Lucaro turns away.

Flint smacks his palms onto his dark cargo pants, his face in shadow. "We're not gonna learn anything from these, that's for sure. I wish they were stupid enough to leave out a way to decipher their jargon." He gets up. "Let's go look for some things to stick the keys into."

We exit "d0cs". Lucaro douses his aura sphere, joining us outside.

Little else left to do, we make the dreary progress of poking our heads through random doors along the halls in the hopes of summoning more secrets—or at the very least, a place to turn a bunch of keys. We discover a freaky generator-looking room with a bunch of glass shrapnel and blue goo spills on the ground, a shabby bedroom made up of old cots, a couple toilets, and then, finally, this room labeled "cam". Within "cam" lies a number of screens showcasing the various chambers of the laboratory. We show up on one of them, labeled "cam", as surprising as it sounds, and it is here that I pull out my keys.

"This looks promising."

Flint grunts. "Yeah. Let's hope so." We split up, examining the room. I head straight to the very back and gloss over all the bright screens, my fingers digging into the dark recesses surrounding them to seek out key-holes.

And then—beneath the screens, beside some sort of control panel I can't begin to make sense out of, I catch a little slip in the mechanism. Cycling through keys, I try one at a time until one _chicks_ in and the screens all light up with wonderfully helpful instructions.

"Over here, Flint," I call, except he's already beside me and working the panel.

Under his breath, he assures me, "I have no idea what I'm doing, but if it explodes, it should take me out first, uh?"

"D-Dude..." I cringe, "don't go there."

He waves me off, gently pushing me back. "Let me do this. I'm gonna lose my mind if I don't follow this lead for myself." Sure, I could get Lucaro to shove him back, but I ultimately come to the conclusion to let Flint burn through his frustration. Peeking over his shoulder, I watch him glance across screens and zoom backwards and fiddle with all kinds of tiny buttons—I'm not sure how he gets so quickly used to the system.

"Geez, Flint, have you been here before?"

He flinches to the sound of my voice breaking air. "Uhhhh... oh, no no no. I'm just trying things." He glances up once, his afro jiggling aggressively, to meet my eyes. "Just... I have an idea." Returning to the controls, he clicks one other decisive fob, and the screens all dim save for one. It's the camera with Volky on it, passed out in his cot, surrounded by glowing pokemon. It's almost like a ritual. "Aha." While I stare on, Flint carefully rewinds the footage of the lone screen.

A mob of grunts passes by, a thundercloud of gray fabric. They zoom backwards into the folds of the past, and then doors shuffle and people funnel in and out—and the scientists stand up. Gasping, I tap his shoulder. "They just—"

"I know I know I know," he hisses through his bewilderment, and he zooms back a few more spasms of screen-color, then forces the camera's feed to roll forward once more. "Now we just gotta figure out what went on in here." After a few excruciating seconds of watching mouths move without hearing voices, Flint laughs weakly and tries another button. The video explodes with sound.

"Hurry hurry hurry hurry," one scientist—the woman—is gesturing to the other. "She'll be back soon. She expects an answer."

The man sighs, long and hard, sagging into his coat. "I can't believe this happened... The one day I visit Sinnoh..."

The woman cringes. "C-Cedric. I'm sorry."

"No, this..." Cedric closes his eyes. His head sort of curls into his neck, and his sandy brown beard disguises his mouth. "This was important. You had every right to tell me. I can't believe the thugs of your region have been kidnapping members of your laboratory. I just... I think about—Have I told you about my daughter?"

"Cedric we need to hurry before—"

He cuts her off. "We don't have much time left. Why spend the rest of it under her orders? Sounds like we'll be doing that either way."

Flint and I flinch. I awkwardly grab at his hand, shivering. He lets me. Lucaro takes my other one, staring into the screen, brow furrowing.

Dropping the substance in her hands, the woman stares up at Cedric. "Fine. Elaborate." The object pools from her grip and onto the table—a chain, glowing crudely red.

It's _the_ chain. With the realization, I wince, tugging at Lucaro, thinking about all the horrible things it may have done to my best friend. Then before I can stop it the image of it curling around his throat, cutting off his air, burning the brightness of his vision, scraping out the mirth in his face, leaving him empty, utterly _empty,_ is more than enough to leave me stunned and silent as the scientists continue their conversation. The more I listen, the less I want to, yet the less I'm able to tear myself away.

With her compliance, Cedric places a hand over her shoulder. "My daughter, Juniper. You've heard of her, yes? She took in a young girl a few years ago, a young girl apparently from the Sinnoh region. She... she's a little unnatural, the poor girl. Her skin's white, like white like—well, like a shaymin. And there are flowers in her hair—they just grow there, naturally, I guess—like one. I think there's a connection between her and... here. Yet somehow she ended up in Unova. Do you follow?"

The woman's brows raise. "I... follow." Her lips stray low, scrunched together. She is counting down her seconds left of freedom, and I don't know what happens when it reaches zero, but my heart is thudding against my chest like it wants to kill me.

"There's a group of delinquents not unlike the ones here back in Unova. They'd somehow gotten their hands on the girl, years ago. I'm thinking there's some sort of connection we had yet to establish between them, as Juniper's daughter—er, I suppose my granddaughter—is... well, the girl's unnatural. Not only her looks, but she can speak to pokemon. It's done wonders for my research, but it's only making me more aware of the little we understand about our world. How badly we may be treating it." A grunt from Lucaro. Flint glances at me, concern in his eyes, and I shrug back. "I'm thinking, with this chain you've been developing—if it works on pokemon and humans, that only confirms the relationship between humans and pokemon being much more prevalent then we've thought about it. I wonder, sometimes, what awaits us in our next lives, what sort of being watches over us... I think less and less that anthropocentric religions understand the truth..."

"Cedric." The woman interrupts him, eyes over his shoulder. "_Why_ are you bringing this up."

"Well... back home, these religious icons are trying to convince us that we must renounce all connections to pokemon. Pretty crazy. I think—I'm really starting to think that they _know_ about this region, about yourthugs. Because they knew about my granddaughter, and by all accounts she looks like she's connected to this region here. I fear that these icons plan to work with your people... that they're going to use this chain of yours...

"And I'm thinking, if we can somehow _warn_ someone... that this team of fiends has their eyes on the gods..."

Suddenly his hands are on the chain. The woman squawks. "CEDRIC—"

Just as the doors slam open, and high heels drill through the tile ground, resounding ominously, Cedric has grappled the chain from around the woman's desperate fingers and held it out to the stranger in the room. "I'm not letting you control the gods."

The stranger purses her lips. "Oh? That is not the answer I asked for. _Ced_ric, I_ said_ I expected a detailed report concerning the percentages of elements in the conglomerate upon my return. Easy, right?" She steps nearer, nearer, heels sliding against tile. From her belted dress she reveals a poke ball, then releases a husky purple skuntank, who grins at the scientists. "You've already conducted alloys supposedly holding similar mixtures of elements also in the blood of the gods. We just needed to ready it. We are _so_ close to my beloved Cyrus's fruition and the birth of his new world."

We all cringe at _beloved_.

Then the doors slam open one last time, followed by bright yellow electric pokemon and a livid blonde-haired man. "MARS, I WILL TAKE YOU CAPTIVE."

Flint whispers "Volky" as his eyes glaze over.

Screeching, Mars surges at the scientists, grappling for the chain in Cedric's hands. "GIVE ME THAT GIVE ME THAT GIVE ME THAT NOW! GIVE IT! GIVE IT OVER! YOU—NO!" Her screams grow rampant, hungry, repulsive, and as she tears away at the chain, it begins to shudder.

"NO!" cries the woman, the other scientist, who takes Cedric's side to tug away.

It's a sick tug-of-war threatening to claim lives. Lucaro and I watch with wide, glistening eyes when the chain, spasming, begins to froth. At the wills of three separate individuals, pulling it into three directions, it hisses, bubbling, fizzling—and Mars, in a moment of distress, releases it to duck behind a table.

Red.

Red bleeds into the screen, encompassing the room, only to implode and attach itself to its closest objects: up the scientists' arms and into their faces. It's like blood dripping onto their skin and swallowing up their arms, necks, heads, only the chain seeps into them and leaves crazed crimson imprints that glow.

The two collapse. Mars, screeching, points her skuntank in the direction of Volkner and his electric pokemon.

Then the screen flickers off. I look up; Flint, eyes resolute, has ended the feed.

"I don't want to see any more. I can't sit and watch any more of it." He releases a breath. His hand cups around his head. "Is it crazy that I can't bring myself to believe any of this actually happened? N-Niri. Confirm what I just witnessed. Please. My head's gonna explode."

I swallow. I look at Lucaro, once. He catches my wary gaze. When I open my reluctant mouth, Lucaro grips my shoulder and speaks through me. My voice flows outwards, but Lucaro's words take flight. "I saw. I saw the scientists converse over the nature of humans and pokemon, as well as the strange chain that they created. I saw Mars, the Team Galactic woman, who tried to make them work for her bidding. I saw them fight her. I saw them lose. I saw them lose horribly."

Wheezing, I scoot out of Lucaro's grip and mouth, _You can do that?_ He nods, unaffected. I ask with my hands all splayed out, _Why did you never use that before now?_ Lucaro just freaking shrugs. I think about punching him, except he's just too good a boy to punch.

Flint can't find words. He stares ahead, the shadows playing across his pale face. "I'm... I'm just speechless. Thanks, though. Thanks, Niri." Lucaro blushes, collecting his owed gratitude. "What were they saying at the beginning, about some sort of... the daughter, or whatever. I wonder what that was all about."

We're silent, pensive. There's not much to be said—

Until Lucaro blurts, "THE STORY ABOUT THE POKEMON THAT WAS TURNED INTO A HUMAN!"

I shriek at him; Flint completely shuts down. I thought he was lost before, but now he can't even look at us.

"Y-Y-Your lucario can speak."

There is nothing we can do to back ourselves out of this. Sniggering, I hide my face into my hands. "Yes... he can talk."

Lucaro jumps in, "And I am not her lucario! I am my own lucario. My name is Lucaro."

Dead silence. Flint eventually squeaks, "You have your own name."

"Yes. It is Lucaro."

"Wh-Why didn't you tell me any of this at all, Niri."

I look up. Scowl. Fold my fists into my lap. "Okay, we were trying to get into the habit of _not_ telling random strangers about how he talks, because then _this_ happens _every single time_ someone new hears him speak."

"Oh..." He draws off. "I guess that makes sense. I... Well, I'd probably do the same in your position." We spend a moment just sort of staring at each other, out of words to express the thing that we just watched, unable to continue this idiotic conversation concerning the lucario who can speak. "Let's go find Volky and tell him about the camera feed. Now at least we know what happened. That... chain... has some amount of Dialga's and Palkia's... matter... in them, I guess—the ability to control space and time. Somebody else's, most notably, as our pals in Team Galactic have been doing.

"They aren't... oh, gosh, are they? Is that how they plan to control the universe? _Control the gods?_ But how..." Groaning, he folds his head into his hands. "I don't know. I really don't want to know. We just have to find them and kick them _really_ hard where it don't shine. Then maybe we can stop ourselves from having to answer these sorts of questions." He starts to get up, pulling himself from where he was all leaned into the control panel. "The red, though. I recognize that. I think... I think that's why some of the leaders have gone dead on me.

"I think that's why Volky and I are the only ones trying outside of the idiots who would never care. Galactic's... oooh, this is scary... they're targeting us. They're totally targeting us."

"Wait—" I butt in with the one slightly-helpful detail I have left. "What about Roark? He was totally not possessed. I fought him, and he was weak. That's a lot coming from someone with a singular prinplup."

Flint snorts. "Hey, Roark's a kid. He's new to this. Don't be so hard on him."

"Oh."

Quiet again. He sighs, dragging his hand across his face. "We're freaking lucky those guys didn't get me or Volky... since their weird chain thing broke. Oh." He blinks. "Maybe they can't hurt us, then. I mean... it broke... after all."

"Oh!" My voice erupts at this hopeful speck of good news. "That would be very nice."  
If they can't hurt us, then they can't hurt Layke either, right?

They can't possibly make another chain now, can they? Now that they lost the scientists smart enough to make it? Team Galactic can't possibly be that smart, too. Nah. They wouldn't be trying to freaking _kidnap_ people if they didn't need the involuntary assistance of others.

That's the conclusion we come to. We head out of the room and reunite with Volky in the hopes of never having to experience what we witnessed ever again.


	9. Dreamlike

**After that confusing chapter, why don't we switch back to Layke. Yes. That will definitely not make things more confusing.**

**OMG—nah no worries, we get busy sometimes. I'm happy you liked the chapter! And yeah, you'd be right to think that we're getting close to the climax (of arc 1 that is! Though it most likely will be the longest arc, so you're right in that regard I suppose).**

Chapter 9: Dreamlike

_Commander Saturn_

"Mars, where are we going?"

Her words flow like honey, slowly and steadily and sweetly succumbing to my question. "Just a little farther. Dear Cyrus told me he has pinpointed the location where the three underground caverns connect."

"They... connect?"

Her quiet, loping laugh bounces across the dark, damp walls. "Yes. Well—At the location equidistant to the three lake caverns, there is an area within the catacombs of Mount Cornet." She stretches, the red rings around her arm swishing with the motion and making red lights dance in stripes up the ceiling. "You do not understand how momentous this is for our organization, Saturn." The shiver inexplicably collapses down my back when she says it, her eyes flashing back to snipe me in the hazy red-tinted darkness.

I remember, once, years and years ago, Niri and I snuck into the lake cavern by our hometown. We found—Well, I'm not completely sure what we found. We found something, something that glowed and danced in its tiny cavern home, like the red rings except less sinister, more white, and then that something smacked us into the walls and stole our memories of the event.

Now apparently there's three of them, and apparently we need to find all three of them.

"We once attempted to sneak explosives into the caverns and... ah... bait the beasts out of their protective chambers." I flinch. Vaguely, so vaguely I recall seeing the destruction from behind the comfort of a television screen. Rocks falling, desolation laid waste, just like in Roark's gym. Why does everything connect back to that horrible moment. "They, however, remained elusive, and now seem to refuse to show themselves to anyone. There has been no incidence of a beast's appearance since.

"But it is believed by our beloved leader that the catacombs shall reveal their hiding-spot to us. Then we shall finally succeed." She stops suddenly; I run straight into her. Mars's skin is cold, colder than the cavern's atmosphere. The impending silence is frightfully still. We're the only ones in this corridor. No grunts, no slack-brained pawns in spacey getup following us. "You recall the, ah, Mercury, and Venus, that I told you of earlier, yes?" Her head snaps back to me as she moves ahead.

Then her lips curl into a thin, red-laced grin. "Have ever you heard the folktale of a creature named Shaymin? Shaymin, the harbinger of nature's wrath, would have saved us a great many years and a great many steps in the wrong direction, had she cooperated. But I suppose Mercury and Venus's failure would eventually become our guise of a gift.

"I _am_ Cyrus's most-trusted commander, after all. Not that there is much competition concerning Jupiter, and Keebae is but a small-minded child."

Our feet crackle against slick, sharp rocks that threaten to cut despite the thick soles of our Galactic-grade boots. There are these ridiculous yellow Gs on the buckles of the otherwise space-gray boots, and it is simultaneously the best and the worst fashion decision I have ever seen. Moments like those, like the stupid buckles on the boots, remind me to focus on the present.

I don't know how they did it, but my pokemon have been fully evolved to torterra and golem: a continent-looking turtle and the rock monster to end all rock monsters. They've padded out my team with this toxic teal frog thing, toxicroak, as well as a couple of its pre-evolved croagunk lackeys and this overpowered spiritomb thing that won't even listen to me. Apparently, I'm important now.

You'd think if I was this important, my pokemon would freaking talk to me. I wish I could understand them, hear their voices, telling me what I need to do, like...  
But it's only a bitter fragment of a forgotten wish now.

Finally, the cavern shoots downwards, and Mars reluctantly snags my hand to keep the both of us steady. We step slow and sure through the tunnel, and once we reach the bottom—landing in a cold puddle that soaks our boots—it expands to reveal an enclosed clearing with a small pedestal in its center.

Mars crouches in front of it, her fingers rubbing along the smooth edges and triangular base.

A voice erupts from the tunnel on the cavern's opposing entrance. "As man-made as it looks, legend states that the godlike beings which crafted this region formed the base with one sole purpose." The clack of heeled boots follows; I peer into the shadows of the other opening and catch a pale face of high cheekbones and full, purple-lined lips. Dark violet hair bounces at her head in three buns, and her suit clings to her generous figure. "Mars, get your hands off of the thing. They'll smell you before you've successfully incited fear."

Flushing across her pearlescent face, Mars jumps up and backs off. Her hands form fists behind her back. With the other woman's sharp onyx eyes upon me, I move to Mars's side. When her incisive brow flares, I stutter to a start. "Uh... h-hi. I'm the new commander. Sa...Saturn."

Her lips purse. "Saturn." Her heels clack across the rock; then her hand is on my head and ruffling my carefully-gelled cerulean hair into a nice little hurricane of disaster. "Refer to me as Commander Jupiter. Ah... or Jupiter. That's a lot of syllables." Her nose wrinkles somewhere above my head. "I don't say the full thing often. We leave that to the grunts."

Returning to Mars, she snaps, "Get those bracelets off of your wrist." When she doesn't move, Jupiter grabs her arm and tugs them off herself. "You are quite the little nuisance."

"Dear Cyrus said—"

Jupiter flares her black hole gaze. "I don't freaking care what _dear Cyrus _said. These things smell like you, and so does the pedestal, so now they're aware to your scent. _Now_." She turns heel, facing the platform with the three bracelets jingling in her palm. "Release your pokemon, commanders, and stand very tall and menacing-like. And—Yes—And surround the platform with your pokemon to ensure little to no escape." With her words, charged, floating in the air, Mars and I drop our poke balls to the ground and snap at our reluctant pokemon to ring the area. They're quiet, dismissive, heads bowed in obeisance to the undying Galactic will. Or maybe they just know they have no other choice.

Turt's eyes flash when he faces me and slowly, slowly crawls to his spot behind the screeching purple ball of spiritomb. In that moment, his eyes are bright, thick with emotion, almost human. It shocks me so badly that I raise my voice: "_Get _over there." And he does. And that's all.

Something deep inside of me is crying. I can't figure out why.

Jupiter's fingers curl around my gently shaking shoulder. "Hey, chill out." Then her voice lowers; then her lips dip around my ear—and I realize, with a jolt, it's to keep Mars from hearing. "I thought I would throw up the first time I did it too. Eventually you just figure out that it's what you have to do. It's that... or Cyrus turns you into one of his grunts and steals your mind away.

"His creepy chain doesn't stop for anyone, bud. Not even Sinnoh's Champion."

My stomach clenches.

_The Champion_, I almost ask, but then I think of Mars and my head starts to spin. I can't even be honest with my fellow commanders, now can I?

Keebae. Her name practically burns down my throat. Keebae told me to be honest with her. Keebae told me what happened to Mercury and Venus when Mars just teased me the information. Keebae told me to be careful.

Dang, where's the girl when you really freaking need a friend?

Jupiter snaps me back to attention. "I said _relax_, Saturn." _Saturn. _"Now let's get this going already." A part of me wonders, softly asking my dumb self if I still actually want to be Saturn. "Now I'm going to put the chains here on the pedestal, and the _second _the light fills the room, we have to attack. If you're slow, I will tell Cyrus."

Cyrus. Cyrus's dream. His voice, quietly sharp and full of authority, the sort of voice that plunges you into its mind-numbing depths and compels you closer, ever closer, begins to overflow me. Just the thought of it is enough to succumb to his will.

I don't even know what it is yet, his dream. He won't tell any of us.

I have hope, though. Hope that his dream will make this world better.

We're just lucky Mars found remnants of her old red chain stuck to her arm. Lucky there was three of them, three little chain-links, perfectly enough to... do whatever it is we're doing.

Jupiter kneels, careful not to touch the pedestal, then clinks the three little red bracelets down in a row. They seem to shudder with a bright, carnal power, then dissolve into something hot and vile and utterly red—but I can't tell what it is because then the light is blinding.

Jupiter's sharp, rich voice is all I can hear: "GET THE BEASTS AND PIN THEM DOWN."

There's nothing else to be done. Cyrus's harsh gray gaze fills my line of sight until I swear I go blind from it.

Screaming through the light, I fight for my pokemon's attention, _fight _for their undying loyalty, fff_ffffight_ for their actions, for the unrelenting sound of their bodies crashing into the pedestal and overcoming the golden hues of light.

I scream until my voice is raw, until my ears are numb, until my hands, outstretched, have clenched into fists and my nails have cut through the skin on my palms.

I scream until I can't any longer.

Then I open my eyes, and through the light I see a child. The child's in a grungy tee and ratty old shorts, not because his family is particularly poor but because these were his favorite clothes, and it was all he ever wanted to wear. His skin is brown, and his eyes are bright blue, and his hair's this wavy, choppy cerulean.

He's asking me why, again and again, ceaseless, _why_, but I just shake my head.

I don't know why.

He's got skinned knees and a missing tooth and flared red cheeks, and these big eyes that seek to devour everything. And his hand—his hand is holding someone else's, someone else's chunky little tan kid hand with these freckles that I know and this long dark hair that I know and braids and a smile and a laugh that I know, that I know, that I know all too well.

They're giggling and running around and falling over and being kids, and then all of a sudden the light gets brighter, and kid-me is gone, but kid-Niri approaches that light, and her eyes go white, and her mouth falls open, and then it all dissolves into the form of a twin-tailed creature small enough to be the old stuffed clefairy from my childhood. I couldn't sleep at night without it in my arms.

The pokemon has this weird yellow cap about its head, and now it's the one asking _hey, Layke, why_. And I just shake my head harder as the tears blind my gaze and I find the strength in my shredded lungs to yell at Turt and to yell at the spiritomb and to yell at the toxicroak to grab it.

Their fingers and hooves and feet slip around the creature, nailing it to the pedestal, and then I watch through a blurry lens as Jupiter's pale hands scoop up one of the rings and slip it around the creature's neck. _Uxie_, it whispers, shuddering, like a name, like a promise, before it falls silent and still.

I look over to watch the rest of the pokemon grasp the two other stuffed-animal-shaped creatures and slide the rings around their necks.

Mars, somewhere beyond their heads, claps her hands together and cries, "Oh, thank goodness Cyrus knew what to do with our remains of the red chain. What a shame we couldn't trust the scientists after all."

"We can't trust anyone, you know," Jupiter smirks. Her violet lips split into a laugh, and it makes my heart shudder the way her eyes slit over to me.

I open my mouth, but then I close it.

My pokemon have already returned to their poke balls like the deed forced them into hiding. Shaking all over, I crouch down and start plucking them and returning them to my belt. But then I keep dropping them, and they keep slipping from my sweat-slick fingers, and it's almost like I don't want to pick them up.

Again and again I try to pick up Turt's stupid poke ball, and then suddenly a deep and sage voice explodes from the ball: _WHY_, again and again and again _WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY_.

Shuddering, I _hurl_ him at the cavern ground.

Then I swallow. Then I smear the scowl across my lips, and I crunch his ball into my fist. Then I return the ball to my belt, soon followed by the others, and then I sit on the ground and release a very low, very long sigh.

Everything is quiet. For now, everything is quiet.

Across the room, Mars and Jupiter finish stuffing the creatures into bulging scratchy hemp sacks. Mars reaches out to toss one my way, but Jupiter's hand snaps around it. Her eyes sink into me, and they duck away, but her voice says, "I don't trust him enough to carry something this important."

"Ah. _I_ think he more than proved himself, Jupiter."

Jupiter's lips smear together. "_I_ don't care."

"I'll tell Cy—"

A stark grin snaps across her face. "Go ahead. Do it. I still don't care." She hefts the two bags over her shoulder.

I want to ask her why she's being so nice to me, but I can't even stand up.

As the commanders begin to shuffle up the corridor, I struggle to get my freaking feet under me. While I'm sitting there, scrabbling on the dirt, I catch the sharp relief of Galactic boots on rock. With a wince, I shove to my feet and try to follow after it, only the boots are too fast and I'm far too spent to follow.

But the wave of bright white hair burns ahead of me like a flag, alongside her receding form. Her wrist glows with the affirmative blue of a bracelet.

She disappears down the second entrance, the one Jupiter had come and met us from.

"Saturn?" Mars's call. "What did you see?"

I turn slowly, struggling to face them.

In the very edge of my vision, Jupiter offers the slightest shake of her head.

I cough into my fist. "I thought I saw a pokemon." Keebae. "It was nothing." Keebae. "Let's go." Why was Keebae sneaking around... and where in the world is she going now.

_Niri_

Things have been more interesting.

I'm perched at the edge of Volky's bed while Flint holds his hands and retells the tale of the horrible things we saw on the camera. They're gazing into each other's stupid lovestruck eyes, and my stomach just gets tighter and tighter each time I look over. I keep expecting to ruin something romantic, like a kiss, like, I don't know, like something I wouldn't flipping know anything about.

Lup keeps chirruping in my pocket. _Gee, Niri, I don't think they need you over here right now._

_Yeah, I know._ I close my eyes, sigh. _I know, bud._

_Then why are you still here?_

My hands fold under the weight of my head. _I don't know. I don't know where to go._

This would be less awkward if Lucaro wouldn't absolutely refuse to speak, but, well, here we are.

"It was terrifying, Volkner, like..." Flint pauses mid-breath. There's this soft sound, like he's stroking Volkner's cheek or something. "Like the worst thing I've ever seen. Right, Niri?"

Suddenly my face is burning up all over again. "Right." Promptly I stand, and then I'm stomping out the door and slamming it shut behind me. My back crashes against the wall, where I slide to the ground and groan into my folded-up knees. Then I pick myself back up because evidently I am still not as far away as I'd like to be, and I charge my blustery, flaming way out of the Floaroma Town Pokemon Center.

Once I've left it all behind me, I find myself a quiet little flowery meadow—not very hard to do in a town such as Floaroma. Then I sit myself in the dirt and I sigh, and I sigh again, and I close my eyes and rest my head in a hand. His braid has tied itself around my finger, I don't know when, but I feel it and it makes it hard to breathe once more.

The dusky sky blankets me in a cool wind. Before I've even reached my poke ball, Lup has entered the space in front of me. His goofy prinplup face, like an awkward adolescent's, cocks at me. _I didn't think you'd take me so literally. That was a pretty awkward escape._

_Yeah_. I groan. _You talk like I don't know that, you freaking flightless bird._

_Penguin, actually._

I scowl around my snigger. _Shut up._

Lup shrugs. _I can also do this._ He unceremoniously turns and spews a fast-popping array of bubbles through the darkened field. As they sail through the night, they are overcome by the light of the moon, and their pops explode with the fury of fireworks.

_Wow, my hero,_ I mutter, rolling my eyes. _Lup, the master prinplup._

He rests his flipper on his hip like the most dramatic bird-child to ever exist. _Yes, precisely._ He flips his head. Not much of a scene.

Lowering my head, I squeeze my eyes back shut and murmur, _Well, thanks anyways, bud. Everything is still going totally and completely wrong, but, well..._ I don't know how to finish that statement, so I just let it hang, a bitter fragment of my wishes.

"But things will be alright soon."

Flinching, I shout, "LUCARO, YOU SCARED THE FREAKIN—" I turn in place, scooting on the dirt, to stare up at the lucario. "I did _not_ realize you followed me."

"Well, I..." He flushes purple across his snout. "First I had to make up an excuse for you. Then Volkner wanted to know why I talked, and I, ah, I told him a very slight lie, because he and his very strong boyfriend made me slightly uncomfortable."

I snort. "Oh, tell me about it, buddy." When I pat the dirt next to me, he graciously sits down. There's a telltale tail-thumping behind him. To the raise of my brows, he flushes harder, half-covering his face with a paw.

We're staring at each other. His amber eyes, flush with feeling, have attached to me, and I can make out little Niris inside of them gazing back into him. "Lucaro, I..." I look away. My heart crunches in my chest, another shattered hope. "I don't know what to do... Y-You heard what we're up against. The Champion's outright missing, probably kidnapped by Team stupid Galactic, and the rest of the elites aren't on our side. Apparently most of the gym leaders have gone stupid or also missing... and then Roark's _just a kid_. I...

"What _can_ we do?"

Lucaro opens his mouth; he cuts himself off when his eyes flare blue. "W-Wait... Why is she..." Abruptly he grasps my wrist and throws the both of us to our feet. "We need to go." And then we're running, inexplicably we're running, and as I struggle to keep up, my prinplup dances around my feet and emits loud honking sounds of annoyance. I eventually manage to find my poke ball and return him to it before he collapses of fatigue. What a loser.

Then my hair's whipped back by the harsh wind and the air cools about our skin and leaves us breathless, panting, and Lucaro's eyes merely get brighter and brighter and brighter, the color of lost wishing-stars nearly burnt into the horizon.

Through trees and up a hill and past a few more houses: then we're back to where we started.

Keebae's encircling her tree stump, throwing her hand up into the air, the one with the brightly-glowing bracelet. Over and over again, with her panting, raspy voice, she says, "_Where_ are you, _wheeerrrrrre_ are you...

Then she looks up and jolts, clasping her bracelet with her other hand. "Oh it finally worked. Um." She coughs into her fist, breathing heavily. "Hi."

Lucaro blinks, eyes swirling with a disconnectedness. "Why... are you here, Keebae?"

She's in her Galactic garb again, giant boots, giant gray clothes with weird G insignias in the elbows of the shirt. "Jupiter told me to come with her. I was supposed to be in my room, that's what Dad said, _Stay in your room, Keebae,_ but Jupiter found me and said, _No, you're coming with me_." Frantically she throws her gaze into us, her narrow, her dark eyes bright and wider than I've ever seen them.

"Now you need to come with me, because I think I know what Dad wants and I think I _think_ I think I know what he's gonna do to us.

"And I'm scared. I'm really scared, Niri."

Her sullen exterior has been washed away by her distressed tears. She now wraps her thin, frail brown hands around my own and tugs me forward. "This way, this way, please."

"Wait I..." I left my steel bar, my gigantic clunky protection, in the room with Volkner and Flint. "I don't have every—"

Lucaro taps me with it. I snag it from him, mutter a _thanks_ under my breath. It's cold and reassuring in my grip, and I have no idea how I didn't notice him with it before.

The sudden desperation of the moment had just been so—sudden. I needed out, and then I needed answers, and now I guess I have both. _Both_. It hits me in the stomach, first a punch of realization, then softer, gentler, reassuring, a hug all over my body.

Shaking my head, I ask, "Lucaro and I found some really strong trainers earlier. Shouldn't we—?"

"NO WE NEED TO GO NOW." Keebae breaks off just to cough, then tugs me forward one more time. "Now. We gotta go now." She doesn't even stop to finish her sentences, just gets up and starts running.

She's like a ghost: so thin, her hair so white, her clothes so big and baggy, sucking in gulps of air as they shift to her body's motions.

A ghostly little promise in disguise—that's what she is. A promise. A very long, two or three times broken, poorly followed promise.

Lucaro and I lock eyes, evidently without a better plan, and we hurtle across the shadowy plain after her.


	10. To the One I Love

**Alright, we've just about reached the end of ARC 1! Oh dang!**

**Sorry for the delay. I've been losing my interest in fanfiction lately... so I guess that means I have succeeded in my goal of using this story as practice for another, haha. I'll probably just put this one on hiatus after the end of ARC 1 and come back to it in a few months. It would... feel wrong to leave it without properly finishing it. Plus, WHO IS THE POKEMON THAT WAS TURNED INTO A HUMAN? 2 MANY QUESTIONS 5 ME**

**OMG—ah, so you've got a switch? Well if you want to add me as a friend, here's my switch friend code! It's SW-5166-0430-7628. I haven't played the new pokemon games as of yet (kind of thinking about it, but I don't know) I've just been binging Phoenix Wright lately hahaha... It was finals week these past few days for me, and I got slammed with a sickness, so I couldn't even focus on writing, I legit was dealing with finals, studying until my illness-inflicted brain swam, then I just hid in bed and rested and played Phoenix Wright, haha. Maybe I'll write a couple one-off stories about the Sword/Shield characters if I get into the games. Marnie's pretty freakin cute. I've had a few other friends tell me that they're obsessed with Allister too. That must mean he's a good boyo, haha.  
Lucaro and Niri make a fun pair. Lucaro's logical, but he's emotional in the ways that most characters aren't since he's a legit talking pokemon. He's super fun. He makes a good foil for Niri, who is this... savage wreck, haha.  
Hahahaha, no yeah Volkner and Flint are definitely dating. I'm surprised you couldn't tell. Maybe I wasn't clear enough? xD That's why Niri's so uncomfortable around them. It just makes her feel freakin lonely. She needs to get over Layke (is what I thought when I started writing the story, only now it looks like both of them are longing for each other and I accidentally made them straight when Niri was supposed to get a girlfriend?!)  
Thanks again for all your kind words!**

**Now let's get this over with~**

Chapter 10: To the One I Love

Keebae leads us up a mountain path and into a hollow easily missed by cursory glance. When I can't figure out where she's disappeared to, she calls from the hole, "YOU'RE SO DUMB!" but maybe I just didn't know there was a freaking massive hole in the ground right behind that patch of rocks, okay.

Chuckling, Lucaro follows. I think about elbowing him, but he's too kind for that. He's too good for this lousy world.

We call after the frail girl and follow her into her ditch. I slip when I land and rocks chew up my legs—and suddenly I'm seeing that moment, that moment where Layke turns around and he asks me what's wrong and he _knows_ I've gone and hurt myself again. And his eyes are so kind and his voice is so soft and his hands are so warm and it's too much—and then I open my eyes and it's nothing at all, just the ache of a lullaby in the musty air.

We're gonna find him. I have to keep telling myself because each day it feels less and less real. We're _gonna_ find him.

"It's this way." Keebae's tiny hand snatches my own, and she tugs me forward. Her fingers sink into my hand, brown and cold and almost doll-sized. She's so small, like a—like a prized stuffed animal, or a collector's toy. Her narrow eyes widen until they fill her head, dark and full of forebode. They reflect the aura encircling her wrist. Our only light source, its cerulean luminescence shimmers across the well-worn cavern trail, bounding along the walls and glimmering over smooth stalactites that jiggle dangerously from the ceiling.

It's breathtaking.

"Keebae..." I venture, "_what's_ this way?"

She hovers before moving on, her footsteps splashes in the puddles of stagnant water. "I... I don't think I should tell you."

Lucaro, from over my shoulder, asks, "But you are showing us, yes? Then why can you not tell us?"

"Oh. I guess that's right." Her breath hisses out from between her teeth. "And here I was trying to be all secretive and careful..." Releasing a breath, Keebae hoists her foot from a particularly clumpy puddle and saunters onward. The path slopes up, beckoning us further into the darkness. "We gotta get to the summit before... they do." Shuddering, she adds under her breath, "They're gonna ruin everything...

"Dad—" her voice hitches. "Dad says we're gonna make the world a better place. He's been saying it ever since I met him, ever—ever since he discovered the horrible truth. This planet's rotten to its core, and it's been rotting for years and years and years. C-Can't you tell?" Her eyes flash from over her shoulder. "Lucaro, you can tell... right?"

He swallows, whispers, "Yes... I know what you mean." His paw reaches for my free hand and squeezes it tightly. I all but hear him say _I am afraid, Niri._

"You mean..." They both flinch as if they forgot I was also in the chamber, even as I am sandwiched between them. "You mean because pokemon have been treated so poorly lately? Like how we tell them what to do and expect them to listen? Most of them are forced into the role of... subservient slaves... I guess... I-Is that what you're referring to, Keebae?"

"I mean, yeah, part of it at least. People suck. I suck. Everyone sucks." She lets out a grunt, kicking a stone into the abyss of darkness.

"Uhhh... you okay, Keebae? It sounds like your self-esteem's a little, uh, lacki—"

"Yeaahhh yeah yeah yeah _whatever_." Then she shuts off, and we hike in silence.

But evidently she can't keep it that way. "It's just... frustrating how everyone hurts each other, no matter what. You try your hardest and it doesn't even matter. You'll make someone upset in the end. Always. It's always that way. It doesn't matter how much they care about you or how much you love them. It'll never work out because people aren't perfect, and love isn't real."

Lucaro and I stop to share an awkward glance. I ask, "Keebae... are you _sure_ everything is okay?" I think somebody might have a case of some pent-up emotional baggage.

"No I'm... frrrrrggggh..." Her growls continue, little gremlins of half-formed sentences, as we hike. Somewhere above us, a pinprick of light—white light—emerges. We round a bend and the light grows brighter, too bright; I squint as it overcomes us. The tunnel pours outwards, and the light purifies our tired, scrunched up faces.

I step into snow; it makes a satisfying crunch underfoot. I take another step only to slip over a patch of wet dirt. Pausing, my fingers tight around Lucaro's steady azure paw, I stare at the ground and watch footsteps unfold beneath us, footsteps that are not our own. The fresh track leads ahead: three sets of feet.

They leave the same imprints as Keebae's Galactic boots. She gasps, recognizing them, and utters, "They must be moving really fast... I-I hope they Mars didn't see me and..." She swallows, her face stricken. "Th-This could be bad."

"Oh, great." My free hand, having released Keebae's, lands by my side, curving around my hip. "Because it wasn't already?"

Her sharp teeth rip into a snarl. "Oh _shut_ it, Niri. You're so moody."

"My best friend is also—"

"Shut up shut up I know I know I _know_... g-get out your prinplup, okay. Just in case."

Wordlessly I touch his ball. He doesn't need me to tell him; Lup joins my side, his lanky, gangly prinplup form collecting particles of snow. Great, puffy clouds blanket the air above us, but what little light that trickles through reflects sharply off the ice-laced earth and blinds us. Our breaths form around our mouths, our stupid, listless, wide-open mouths.

Keebae releases her stolen chimchar—now a little larger, a little ganglier. Monferno. He's got some weird blue stripes around his eyes, like a bandit. Reminds me of his owner. But he clings to her leg in such a way that I can't quite avert my eyes—his undying loyalty renders me speechless. Why does he like her _so_ much, right?

My prinplup huffs. _Let's go, Niri. It sounds like we don't have much time._

_Right_. I swallow hard. Keebae releases a couple other pokemon—some dusky blue zubats and a puffy white thing she calls cinccino, never seen anything like it before—then we head off. She asks me while we crunch over the freshly-laid footsteps, "Don't you have anything other than your dumb bird?"

"Uhhhh..." I shrug. "Never needed anything more than him and Lucaro." And I've got that steel bar, which I've tied around my waist with a scarf we found back at that laboratory. That makes me like a steel type, sort of. "I never really had the time to go catching pokemon either."

"Niri, you could've literally caught pokemon at any point ever."

I grunt. "Well... yeah..."

Before Keebae can make another snap at me, Lucaro butts in. "I appreciate her efforts not to wrongly imprison pokemon who may not wish to be captured and forced to a lifetime of servitude."

Keebae opens and then shuts her mouth. She mutters, "Drat," and that is all.

We've followed the footprints into a lush, snow-covered clearing. A few wayward paths tempt us, but thanks to the fresh steps in the snow, we've no chance of getting lost. Something tells me in the very pit of my soul that I would've made some wrong turns had it not been for the footsteps. Almost like... if they hadn't been here previously, if I'd gone up here all on my own without any help save for my pokemon, I get the feeling I would've fallen into the abyss of endlessly darkened pathways and lost sight of my way forever...

W-Well, thank goodness such is not the case.

Keebae thunders ahead into the cavern, and I follow with Lup and Lucaro at my heels. The blackness swallows us up once more, leaving naught but the beautiful aural glow to comfort us. We file up a narrow hall that morphs into a natural staircase, our toes clicking ominously into the rock-encased noir.

We go slower, softer, at Lucaro's request, and finally he whispers, "I hear someone up ahead."

It's like all the air in the room has been misplaced. Gasping, I try to reply, but I can't—I can't breathe. At my side, Keebae huddles into my shadow, her eyes ever wider with fright. Eventually we all share a long moment in each other's warmth as the shadows beckon about us, the light flickering with Keebae's shaking wrist: and then I rasp, "I'll do it. Keebae, stay here. Wh-While they're distracted, you get past me." My eyes dip to Lucaro just a second. "The big bads are probably past this grunt. You go with her. Okay?" He grimaces, but he blinks in affirmation.

I turn to Keebae's small, shivering form.

She nods silently. When her eyes meet me, they zap me with a quiet, humble gratitude. She mouths, _thank you_, and I nod without really thinking about it.

Lucaro's paw fumbles around my fingers, and he forms a minuscule azure ring. It slides onto my thumb and stays, secure. "So you can see," he murmurs.

Gently he pats my head. "Be safe."

I struggle to nod, to breathe, to—but there's nothing left to say.

I turn and leave my friends behind. Lup takes my side, ever the loyal pokemon, and my hand falls around my steel bar. Maybe, I'm thinking, maybe if I catch them off-guard, I can knock them straight out with a well-placed _smack_ from the bar. Then we can just—we can just go.

I sense the breathing in the darkness before my tiny light clutches their face. I catch something dark and full of angles before they duck out of the aura's reach.

"Sh-Show yourself." A voice. No... they—they know I'm here. They know I'm here and I can't see them. Stupid of me to think I could surprise them. Something cold and sinister slips down my throat and slides into my stomach. It hurts. I'm scared. It's just me and this grunt in the utter dark. They see me, but I can't see... them.

"How did you find us." The voice again, booming off the walls. I get the idea to wrap my fingers tight around the ring Lucaro gave me; the light, stifled, hides my position. Hurriedly I kick off my shoes and slide on the dusky earth in an effort to obscure where I stand.

I try to squint through the shadows, but I can't make anything out. It's like—oh my _gosh_ it's just like with Roark...

"Tell me, _how_ did you find us."

Then I sense things moving in the air. Grunting, I duck, but papery leaves _zing_ past my face and cut into my skin. Blood streams down my cheek in thin, sharp rivulets. Wincing, I mutter, "I found you because I'm persistent. You don't hide as well as you think you do, you idiots..."

I drag my sleeve up my cheek and wipe at the blood. My fingers knot around my steel bar, releasing the ring to let a brilliant flash of aural light surround me.

And then I feel him—again—stronger—lurking _just_ behind my ear—and with a shriek I _swing_ backwards.

I sense more than hear him double over, panting. "_Ow_..." he moans—and a flash of his crumpled-up expression delves into my mind. It must be the aura, letting me sense what I can't on my own.

While he's wheezing, I catch the sound of lucario feet, accompanied by a lithe girl and her ensemble of little pokemon. They're gone just as quickly as they came by.

He's up again before I even register it; his hands have wrapped around my head and his fingers twist over my mouth, silencing me.

"I see your pokemon. Now what, hmm?"

What an idiot. I just as much as look at Lup, and he's pecking at the man's feet. "GHH—" He throws my head at the ground, but I catch myself with my weapon and steady onto my feet. Faintly I can hear the breathing of a being, crouched somewhere in the darkness, one armed with leaves and vines and all sorts of plants and things.

But it's weakening. It needs light to survive, and there is no light down here.

_Lup, go for that. I'll keep this guy at bay._

Lup is gone from my side, hurtling into the pokemon in the corner of the chamber. Shaking my hand, I raise my hand and let the light from the ring filter into the air. Finally I steal a glimpse of my perpetrator's face, bruised and bloodied by—

My heart clenches when I catch the eyes.

There's no way... and yet.

"Layke," I try, but he's already slamming into me, fighting for purchase, fighting for my weapon—so I _swing_ again and it hits him somewhere between his legs, sending him down harder, faster. With him crumpled to the ground in front of me, moaning weakly, I know—I know I could hit him again, and again and again and...

Lup's got his plant pokemon, whatever that lugging beast is, cornered. No more plant-attacks come my way. He's too weak without the sun. _He_...

I can faintly make him out in the shadows. A massive, lumbering tortoise. _It's Turt, isn't it,_ I ask Lup, who flinches and mumbles, _Oh... wait, it might be. I could... Niri, listen, I could barely hear his voice. He's being subdued. I think it's him but there's something way way wrong with him._

My eyes fall to Layke, struggling to pull himself back up.

I crouch down beside him. This could end very badly.

I let my hand nudge against his.

I look him in the eyes, his soft eyes—once gentle, now restless, broken by days, weeks of unspeakable tortures that I can't begin to verbalize.

"Layke," I ask again, and he shudders.

"Ni..." But the sound dies a horrible death in his throat. "No... it can't be... N-N-Niri's dead..."

"No." I talk over him, gently, louder, louder. "I'm not dead. I'm Niri, and I am very much alive."

"Niri," he whispers, practically whimpering, clinging to my face, "Niri are we both dead... did I finally die Niri... did I finally wake up from this nightmare..."

My breaths crunch in my chest. "N-Night..?" I shake myself. "Layke I'm right—I'm right here. D-Dude, what did they do to you?" Even as I speak, he's clutching me, tugging me into him, pressing his face to my shoulder, hiding his wet, bleary gaze. I feel it cling to my sleeve, but he won't let go, and I don't want to make him, just... let my arms encircle his bent-over figure, ever broken by the monsters that malformed him.

"Layke," I murmur, but he's crying, and he can't hear me over his sobs.

I don't... I don't know what to do. My hands tighten around his shirt, his stupid Team Galactic shirt, and his warmth shimmers over my fingers. He's soft and easy to hold, infinitely difficult to let go of.

"Niri, I..." I go numb with the warmth of his lips, pressing into my skin. He speaks through me. "I thought you died. I thought you were gone and I... and I thought... I thought that I had nothing. Nothing..." His fingers curl around me; one slips from behind my back to intercept my face, and his thumb rhythmically strokes my cheek.

My eyes begin to shut. I feel myself giving into him, whispering his name unendingly. Above my breaths I hear him repeating my own in return. He's warm, achingly warm, the warmest thing I've ever held, and the last thing I ever want to let go of.

Then something loud and foreign slaps across the stone corridor.

Our gasps fill the chamber.

I freeze in Layke's arms. His grip tightens around me; his eyes search past me into the darkness. Locating my arm, he relaxes the aura band off my thumb and slips it over his ring finger, raising it to breach the shadows surrounding us. His free hand locks protectively around my wrist. "You're not dying," he utters, "whatever happens, you're not dying again."

My heart catches, watching the little ring shine from his finger. It's stupid, but it's... I almost want to take his hand and kiss it. Despite the sharp fear in his voice, I can't stifle the slightest bubble of laughter. "Layke, I was never dead in the first place."

"W-Well... okay, yeah, but..." Momentarily flustered, he glances my way. His gaze has softened, overflowing with my silhouette. "I thought that you..." He draws off. "I thought, Niri, I thought—"

"COMMANDER SATURN."

He stiffens. "M-Mars, I..." Even as his voice fractures, eyes brighten, lips tremble, he refuses to release me.

"COMMANDER SATURN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE."

He opens his mouth. "Um."

"I-I'm his prisoner," I try, but the red-haired woman is already stomping my way with something bright and glowy in her hands, something horrifyingly crimson. It—It's the same texture as the red that glowed over the faces of those scientists, the ones that were all but comatose in the laboratory.

Shrieking, I stand up, launching myself out of Layke's arms, and swing my steel bar at her face. The woman Mars has ducked before I even get the chance to hit her. Lup, from the shadows, jumps at her, drilling into her skin; a nuanced kick sends him reeling, and he's out cold once more, head mashed against a rock wall.

Just like...

I swallow, readying my staff.

It's all I have.

And she knows it. Her eyes, gleaming, flicker to her belt, from which she releases a massive fluffy monster. It hisses as it approaches me on all fours, closing in on me with its massive, shuddering form.

My staff shudders in my hands. I'm supposed to attack her pokemon with it. That's my only defense—my _only _defense. No Lup, no Lucaro, no other pokemon because Keebae's right. Keebae's right and I am a fool.

I think the commander knows I don't want to hurt her pokemon. Lucaro's bright, emotional eyes overflow me—

Then while I'm distracted her hands clap around me—

And then suddenly I'm on the floor, rocks scraping my knees.

"Y-You _pushed_ me." I wince. "Layke, you..."

I look up to watch the strange, glowing chain-like substance immerse my best friend's neck, absorbing his skin and bleeding red into him. His eyes, suddenly bright, suddenly tearing into my face, go slack.

His voice, strangled in his throat, releases a soft moan: "Niri..." but it draws off to utter chilling silence.

He saved me. That's what he did.

Mars, with a pause, snaps her fingers. "H-He's stronger than me anyways..." she mutters, then directs her attention to my slack-eyed Layke. "Commander Saturn. _Kill that girl._"

There is no hesitation. No hesitation, only brainless malice moves his arms, steers his feet, sends his remaining pokemon down upon me. There are these horrible toxic-colored frogs that I hurriedly bat at with my staff while they dodge, then this purple spirit monster that laughs when I hit it, _laughs_ with this bubbly black grin.

Nothing is working. I can't touch his stupid agile frogs, and his creepy ghost monster just hisses with approval at my total inability to do literally anything right. Angry tears stream down my face and mingle with the meaningless sweat that gathers on my skin.

"LAYKE," my voice is hoarse, raspy, "LAYKE YOU SAID YOU WERE GONNA KEEP ME SAFE, LIKE, TWO SECONDS AGO."

With a low grunt, his arms outstretch and he _leaps _at me, tugging at my hair, pushing at my body—

Frantically I swing at him, and he falls back to the ground in a heap.

I'm gasping, breathing these ugly heaving sounds. From behind me I can hear that Mars lady cackle. "He won't stop, you know. He won't stop until he succeeds. You can try all you want to give him a new objective, but he can't _keep you safe_ until he's finished _killing you_."

"I, I... I..." I can't see. Everything's blurry and the only light comes from Layke's stupid ring finger. And to think I almost called it romantic. To think I wanted... still want... to think I gaze into his face and recognize his kindness, his soft warmth, and yet within he's a merciless murderer charged to take my life away from me.

To think _any_ of this has _happened_.

A scream tight in my lungs, I sprint at the commander with the bloodred hair. "WELL THEN I'LL KILL YOU FIRST YOU HHHHHHHHORRIBLE CREATURE!" I'm grappling with her and trying to hit her—yet she's still so fast, perfectly guessing my next swing and dodging back.

But soon she's breathing hard, harder than even I am. Her pale cheeks have discolored, and her brow is streaked with sweat. She grunts as she slips out of the way, but I pull strength from my unending stream of adrenaline and keep going. Soon enough it occurs to me to stop swinging _right-left-right-left_ and I stop mid-turn and slam her from the other side—

and she _falls_.

My fists furl around the staff.

An unbridled _need _to keep going, to hit her again, again and again and _again and again and again_ until she's more red and black than pale pink, until she's so stained she's unrecognizable, is threatening to drown me.

But then I see Keebae's bright eyes in my head. And I think about the last time I did that—and I stop. And I suck in a breath and I stop.

Layke's still struggling to his feet in the corner. His pokemon haven't actively tried to hurt me, just sort of hover close to me. I think—I think Keebae's right. I think Keebae's right and I think none of the pokemon genuinely want to hurt me, but they have to because they were told to. Whatever Mars did to my best friend... they aren't afraid of him anymore.

I watch as his exhausted tortoise crawls from a corner of the chamber, trembling step by trembling step. Carefully, with a foot, he plants Layke's shirt into the dirt, holding him in place. Dull green eyes turn towards me.

Turt remembers me. "Th-Thank you," I manage, before I have to look away. It hurts too much not to.

But now it's just me and her.

With Mars at my feet, I tuck my sweaty palm beneath her chin and force it up. Her gaze eclipses my own. Shuddering, she shrieks, "What? _WHAT _do you _want?_"

I swallow my desire to scream down upon her. "How do I undo the... whatever it is you did to him?"

Her eyes pool with... tears. "I don't..." The bright red in her eyes dims. "I don't know... I-I..." She's... whimpering. This terrifying murder-woman who told Layke to kill me without a second of hesitation now can't keep the whine out of her voice. "D-Dear Cyrus heard a scuffle down here... h-he told me to use the new power we discovered on the intruder... I-I-I-I didn't mean to wipe Commander Saturn's brain... Dear Cyrus r-really liked Commander Saturn... H-He'll be very di-di-disappointed in m-m-me...

Her knees fold up into her chest, and she moans into them. "Dear Cyrus is the only person wh-wh-who ever _loved _me... h-h-h-he's all that I have... and now he'll hate me... he'll hate me for ruining the mind of our b-best commander... hate me f-f-f-forever... _forever..._"

The tears gather and fall. They trace my thumb, slipping down my arm and into my sleeve. Disgusted, I release her head and let her cover it in her hands.

S-Something's wrong with this team.

I manage one last glance at my best friend—the one I love—before I hurry into the light at the end of the tunnel.

* * *

**Wow... well that's one way to end an arc 1, huh? Dang.**

**Lots of questions xD Sorry to go on hiatus so suddenly, but there's some other things that I really need to work on.**

**This story was so... interesting to write. I've never written an adventure story at a pace as fast as this one. I was really trying to explore a faster pace, because I feel like most of my stories turn into slice of life by accident, which has its own place—but that place is not in every freakin story I write, haha. I feel like, if anything, this story could've used a somewhat slower pace. There are some things I wish I covered a little more: the relationships between the Galactic members, the disappearance of the gym leaders/Cynthia, the lore behind this world, the fact that Niri was supposed to train more with her staff and also get a girlfriend (I had this idea for her and Maylene to bond, but just, never got the time to introduce her into the story, very sad). I feel like almost everything got brought up, but I don't know if it got brought up ENOUGH I guess. This was still a great experience though.  
Writing is hard xD**

**Anyways, many of these topics WILL be addressed again in a later arc. I just wonder if I brought them up enough for the first arc. The exposition, and all.**

**Well thanks for reading, and hopefully see you in a couple months~**


	11. (ARC 2) Filloma and Reluctance

**Why hello again! I figured it's about time to start up the second arc of my story, now that it's February haha. I just finished a short story for my creative writing class, so I have more time to write what I want... and like... hey... why DON'T I write some more pokemon for a little while? **

**FYI—Updates will be a little more sporadic this time around. There's a couple other things I'm trying to work on while I write this, and this is of course lower on my priority list as it's literal pokemon fanfiction. This is more my Fun Project that I jump into when my other projects are being dumb and annoying.**

**Also expect more weird knockoff OC replacements of characters as well as talking pokemon. Lucaro is in Sinnoh but that doesn't mean we won't get some new friends~**

*****This Arc begins at the same time as when Niri's began!**

ARC II: My Ignorance

In which a pokemon who was turned into a human girl grows up and decides that humanity is not where it's at.

Chapter 11: Filloma and Reluctance

Nighttime. I've been staring at the ceiling since I woke, counting the same cracks in the roof's boards, and I am still not yet asleep.

I catch myself drifting when a sound jolts me out of groggy rest—something akin to the crack of rock against glass. Slipping through the covers, I land _thump_ on the ground and drag a blanket to the other side of my room, in front of the one great window facing the moon.

Once I've rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, I give the glass a gentle knock. Soon after, a pink face greets mine and gestures hurriedly at the lock on my window. It's Marlun. When isn't it Marlun.

I let her in. I can't really not let her in. She'll be cross with me if I don't, and I don't have many other prospects in the realm of friendship.

Easing into the armchair by the window, I raise my brows upon her. My mouth parts into a yawn—then I ask, "What now?"

Her pastel pink cheeks soften and appear to smother the rest of her face. Despite the labor it must have taken to attach a ladder to the back of the professor's home and climb up into its attic to find me, her long brown hair lies perfectly still, a beautiful russet sheet past her shoulders, and she's not particularly winded.

She has too much energy is all. Already Marlun's hands overlap with mine, and she's attempting to tug me out of the chair. "C'mon, c'mon!" she squeaks in hardly a whisper, more the cousin of a shriek, "we gotta go now, Fillmy!"

"Go where?"

I know where.  
Just... don't know if I still want to.

I tug back at my hands, my unnervingly white hands, but she won't give in. Pinkish red fingers fight for my attention, tugging me into her grasp until she's encircled them around my back. Slashes of moonlight are what I see by until my head's lodged into her shoulder, and then I can't see much at all.

"I _told _you, Filloma!" Her cheerfully upright tone tumbles over me. "We're bustin' you out of the prof's house! We're goin' on an ad_ven_ture! We're takin' my skitty and seein' the world!"

I hear it, faintly, from her backpack, the mewl of the pink skitty: _D-Do we have to?_

In a deadpan, I deliver: "Your skitty doesn't want to see the world, Marlun."

Her pout is louder than it needs to be, loud enough for me to feel her breath shiver over my head, tangling into my curly hair. "That's simply because he hasn't _seen_ it yet! Just wait—it'll be the two of us in the lively world of Unova, showing off our adorable young selves and garnering all attention!"

My laugh sputters into her shirt. "You just want to find yourself a cute date, don't you? The gym leaders are an excuse for your true desires to stay in hiding."

Dead silence. "F-Fillmy! S-S-S-Stop seein' into my heart like that!" She proffers an awkward laugh, but I catch the nervousness belying in her throat and cringe.

She's warm against me, warm and comforting. She's also the only person I have, outside of the professor. "Marlun... I'm not trying to. I can only hear pokemon hearts, you know, not yours too. I just..."

"You're just creepishly talented at guessing my thoughts!" she huffs, and I giggle in the darkness of her embrace.

Patting my head, Marlun releases me and gazes into me for a moment. I glimpse myself reflected in her: the unruly shoulder-length green hair and the pink flowers trapped within the curls, the wide blue eyes, wide and very very tired, the unnatural white skin and pursed, pink lips.

My fingers delve into my hair and catch on one of the flowers. Flushing, I struggle with my hand, unable to free it—then Marlun's glides over mine and gently tugs it out of the ensnaring curls. "Thanks," I mumble, and she giggles back, "You know what happens when you do that!"

Her hand tightens around my own. She's in her saggy old tee shirt—the one with the togepi in the frying pan on it, the most ridiculous of her shirts and therefore her favorite—and it's tucked into her rattiest pair of black sweatpants, attempting to engulf her tennis shoes.

"Get yourself dressed, missy! We've got a prison break on our hands~"

I roll my eyes and instruct her to face the other way as I tear out of my pajamas, leaving my sweet dreams of sleep balled up on the floorboards. "Give me more than the time to get dressed, would you? Unlike you, I have plans of packing more than a singular outfit, as well as other necessities." While she's turned away, I pull my backpack out of hiding. Laden with supplies, it requires some cramming before I manage to fight the blanket wrapped around my hips into the bag, but it _just_ about works once I take out the topmost pair of clothes.

Quickly I slip into my white dress, the one with the pretty little fringe on the bottom, then the fuzzy pink cardigan and the white ankle boots. I've a few more outfits in the bag, as well as some extra rations, the blanket, soap, and a miniature first-aid kid.

No poke balls.  
_No _poke balls.

The thought jabs into my gut as I sidle the backpack's straps over my shoulders.

Standing on wobbly feet, I turn Marlun by her shoulder. Her strength isn't visible until I touch her and feel her musculature, alive beneath the skin, waiting to be noticed. Offering a cheeky grin, she tugs me back towards the wall and slides out the window, gesturing for me to follow.

Immediately the ladder is trembling, as soon as my feet reach the highest rung.

I let out a cry. "W-We're gonna die—"

Three floors of falling, Marlun. I stare down at her as she skitters to the ground, then steadies her hands around the ladder's steel sides. "Fillmyyyyyyy! Get down heeeereeeee! Hurry before you _fall_ and break _every bone in your body_ and _then_ Juniper will _definitely _know that you tried to sneak ouuuuttt!"

She's a terrible friend. Scowling, I shuffle through the narrow cusp between life and a painful death while my hands shudder around the metal. If she wasn't so hotheaded, I wouldn't have to deal with any of this... we could just live peacefully in Nuvema Town. I'd become the next professor one day, putting the things my adoptive mother taught me to good use, and Marlun would perhaps _give me a freaking break_.

She's just horny... so horny.

My boot lands on one of her hands. She squeals. "FILLMY!" Swallowing my laugh, I slip to the ground in front of her. She glares down at me, lips smeared together. "That was not a very nice thing to do, that there." I catch her skitty's squeal from her bag.

"I'm sorry, but who's the one who made me climb down a ridiculous ladder?" I huff out a sigh. "Honestly, Juniper probably wouldn't even notice if I left using a more... traditional route, such as the front door. It's—How late is it?" Marlun stares up at the sky like she'll somehow surmise it from the stars. "No it—it doesn't matter how late it is. The point is that it's late and she sleeps like a regular human being, unlike _you_."

"Hmmmmmnnn... I just, I just..." Marlun trades my sigh for her own. "I'm just so excited, Fillmy... I wanna kiss _all_ the people—especially girls. I wanna kiss so many girls." She eyes me, but that memory of that time we tried to date must have surfaced between us, because a cringe wrecks across her complexion like a hurricane. "Not you, but like, literally any other girl." I don't even remember what she found so repulsive about the encounter. Maybe it was the fact alone that I didn't care enough.

I don't know...

Shaking my head, I gesture ahead of us. "Let's go put the ladder in your father's shed, before anything else."

"Oh, yes!" She's on it, sidling in front of me, unlocking and shortening the ladder, going off into the weary darkness to probably put the ladder _not_ where it belongs.

To her return, we take hands and leave the quiet majesty of our home behind us.

My heart seizes.

"M-Marlun... I'm afraid."

She pauses. Her hand ducks behind my ear and tilts my head into her direction. "Of what? Of what we might find?"

I open my mouth, shut it, then meekly nod, staring at the ground.

"Oh, sweetie..." She tugs me into another embrace. I let her, and my arms lock around her back. "Think of it like this, okay? You _won't_ find any of the scary people who hurt you because I will literally punch them into last year. Then they'll _never_ hurt you, ever."

Into her wet shoulder I mumble, "I don't remember what they look like, Marlun." I just see flashes of it when I stare into the darkness. Between pinpricks of moonlight the path is littered with the shadows of humans, arms stretched wide before me, reaching out to me, fighting to clutch me with their gnarled hands. I feel it and I shudder, and I plunge my head deep into her chest.

"Fillm—Oh my goodness. _Fillmy_." Her fingers lock around and shake me, but I do not get leave my hiding place. "Fillmy this is getting a little embarrassing. Come on. Fill_o_ma. Okay. I get you're upset. They aren't here. Please get out of my chest. Pretty please. If someone sees us they will definitely think I am taken, which is definitely _not_ the vibe I'm trying to give out.

"Filloma please."

Wincing, I push back from her, my cheeks hot and red. "Sorry..." But I still see them, lurking in the periphery of my living nightmare.

"C-Can I hold your hand at least?"

Marlun releases a slow sigh. "Okay, but only because it's three in the morning and nobody should see us. Just so you know, I am _dropping_ the hand if so much as a sound creeps out from the forest. I'm not squandering any of my chances here." Her eyes glint in the fertile moonlight as she proclaims this, her hands cupped outwards and overflowed with her fantasies.

I almost feel guilty. Almost, that is.

After all, I am still her best friend.

Taking her strong, warm palm into my dainty fingers, I hold tightly and let her lead me through the umber fronds of grass. Our feet crunch around sleeping little pokemon, and if I concentrate, I can hear them whispering their dreams. I tug Marlun away from any unsuspecting pups she nearly crushes with a wayward sneaker.

"Maaaaan, if we had poke balls, we'd be able to catch so many pokemon right now." Marlun pouts. "I mean, not that I need much more than my sweet Scamp, but like, it'd sure be nice." She does adore her "special Hoenn-imported" skitty.

I shake my head. "If you release a poke ball, I will destroy it."

"Geez. Does _any_one think like you?"

"I don't know. There must be someone out there who agrees." The pokemon surely do. The fear they feel when one such prison enters their periphery fights to stop my very heart.

Someone must agree... someone out there must think like me.

I'm thinking about it, my heart hard and heavy and difficult to carry—a burden alongside my backpack—when I catch the sound of a melodious voice. It floats through the night and wraps itself around me, and I... I recognize the melody.

It steals my breath and weaves through the shadows, and suddenly I've thrown away the safety of Marlun's hand, tossing myself into the depths of the sound, moving closer, heart beating, heart screaming.

There—Behind the route's sandy man-made pathway lies a foreboding forest where even the stars cannot find home. Just beyond the bleak surround, I hear the budding of the sound. I dive through and enter the shadowy void, and I know even as my breaths give me away that I could very well be placing myself into the very danger I had structured my life in the hopes of avoiding it for the past ten years.

I could be destroying everything by doing this—but the sound... it's so sweet, so soft, nothing like the jagged aches of memories I can make out whenever I dare a glimpse into my past.

The song abruptly ends. "Who's there?" A voice, low-pitched and... lonely.

Straightening—though he cannot see me—I answer. "I am."

"And who are you?" he asks.

But I cannot answer, because I am struck by the whisper of another. _I'll protect you._

His voice returns, reaching out to me. "Hello? Are... you still there?"

"Yes, I'm..." I don't know what brings me to say it. A risk. "I just... I was... shocked by your pokemon's kindness. I've never met a pokemon who loved a human as much as yours does you."

"I... I think I know you," he replies, and my heart freezes in my chest.

Then a brightness tears through the forest; a glowing blue bracelet around the boy's arm illuminates the entirety of the small diameter surrounding him, and he catches the white flash of my frightened face.

And I stare into his.

His hair is long and green—a shade of green quite similar to my own—and it falls to his waist in an enchanting flourish. His face has been tanned by the days he has spent outside, but it still somehow retains a pale, foreign quality. Like he doesn't belong here... isn't natural.

His eyes seek into me, a mesmerizing blue, dark until I sink into its bright centers.

I know him. My heart... it speaks to him, and I sense his speaking back.

Somehow... I know this man.

His gaze lands to my hair, my tangled curly hair that almost but does not quite hide the flowers within. Anyone would assume they are well-placed barrettes.

"Shay..?"

To my flinch and leap backwards, his voice grows desperate—"Please don't go. Please... Please stay. I've been searching for so long I thought you had disappeared. Or that something... had made you disappear."

I hesitate for far too long. His long fingers shackle about my wrists. He's gentle, but he's so tall, his shadow practically swallowing me whole. "It's me," he whispers, "it's me, Shay... Do you remember me? You couldn't pronounce my full name, so you called me N. We lived in my castle together. My father found you—

He pauses as the fear overwhelms my face. "What's wrong?"

What's wrong is that his father did not find me. I remember it, I remember it with blinding alacrity, the feeling of his rough hands on my skin, being dragged so far away from my home that I completely forgot what it looked like, the guttural tones of the old man's voice, the way I forgot myself when he hit me, and the feel of cold metal underfoot.

He did not find me.

I glare up at this man and I spit, "Your father stole me from my rightful place." In his shock, his grip slackens, and I break free of his stifling memories. Landing at the edge of the black trees, the moonlight leads me away from N and away from the firm grip of his father. I slip through shadows and throw myself at the girl who has stood in the same place since I left her, hiding my head into her chest, not caring whatsoever when she asks me the many questions she deserves answers to.

His footsteps follow, and he emerges at the edge of the forest.

Marlun's head jumps from where it was against my ear to stare at the tall man who evidently was after me. "Uhhhmm, who are _you_?" Her arms lock around me.

"Please..." I make out N's plea through the fabric of Marlun's togepi shirt, but I don't bother to look. "She's the only person who understands me."

Marlun looks up at N, back at me, up at N, then settles at me. She furiously whispers into my ear, "How in the _hell_ did you already meet a weird guy probably linked to your freaking past? That's just—Honey, that's just uncanny." I shrug into her. She scowls. "Well do you want me to tell him to get lost?" To my frantic nod, she looks up just in time for the man to ask her to _please let him come with us._

"Yeah well... uh..." Marlun swallows. I feel her form shudder. "Filloma doesn't seem to trust you, so I don't know if I should either."

He implores us, "Why... wouldn't you?" I whine into her chest. Marlun gently slaps me. "I knew... Filloma... when we were children. I've been searching for her ever since we lost her. I thought... I really thought we would never find her again. We looked everywhere, I thought, but... not many of the small villages ringing the outskirts of the cities. I guess we... we didn't consider that she had somehow snuck into one of them. You, ah, you see her. She is quite striking in appearance.

"I just had hope... so much hope that we would find each other again. And _I_ have. So I ask you, please... it has been far too long, and I need to speak with her."

Marlun's mouth brushes against my ear again, but I step back, folding my hands into fists. I stare up at N, and his eyes refuse to release me. "You're... You'll just follow us if we say no, w-won't you?"

"I..." He looks away, his face a sudden, bashful pink. "I wouldn't... I wouldn't want to intrude on your lives, but I have been looking for so long... and I... I'm sorry, but I need to see you..."

Oh, dear. My heart—it's thudding deep inside of me, begging to get closer to him.

After he mentioned his father, I didn't even consider what I thought of _him_.

He's... cute. And he clearly has been seeking after me. And I...

I might come to terms with my own tangled existence if I can learn to understand his own.

Swallowing, I let out a breath. "_Fine_. F-Fine, you can come with us. But you're not using my blanket if you don't have one of your own."

Marlun coughs away her laughter. I glare up at her; she shrugs, hiding her grin behind a hand.

I turn back to N.

His face glistens with a warmth. "Thank you... Thank you, Filloma." He's already picked it up, my new name, my chosen name, the name that lets me pretend there is nothing I am hiding behind it. He steps closer, and when I don't back away, he lets himself move in front of me. His hand... reaches out, but he stops and lets it fall.

There are so many words in his mouth, but he speaks none of them, just gazes into me for as long as Marlun can stand it. Then her hand flits around my shoulder and tugs me ahead.

"Okay, let's go, Fillmy. And uh, you too, Tall Man. I'm tired and the Pokemon Center's still a ways ahead."

He cannot hide his smile. "My name is N."

"En..?" Marlun shrugs. "Sure, okay, En."

"Like the letter," he adds, and her face flushes.

I let him walk beside me, but I keep a small distance between us, a distance small enough to let him know that even if he is traveling with us, I still am not ready to talk about the mysteries separating me from him, nor the ones that have tangled us together.

* * *

**I couldn't stop myself from throwing in a couple references to Lucaro (who I mean, also hates poke balls and would relate to our new friend Fillmy on that)  
Also... I mean... glowing blue bracelet? Why? does N have that? what?**

**anyways I miss Lucaro so much but sometimes you just can't write about your favorite lucario since he's literally in the Sinnoh region at this point about to meet Layke and Niri for the first time **


	12. Solidarity

**Welcome back!**

**I had a lot of the last arc mapped out, so I had a perfect composition in mind for like, how long the arc would be, which chapters would contain what (well I didn't expect Layke to get kidnapped originally, but once that happened, I thought of putting in his POV, I decided he'd need to have a segment every other chapter) and etc.**

**For this story, I'm like... well I think I know how it ends, unless things develop separately. Well I... I have 2 ideas for the ending. W-We'll see.**

**That's kind of the fun of these. I know, but I don't actually know xD**

**anyways it's FILLOMA TIME**

Chapter 12: Solidarity

Upon wakening in my cocoon of blankets, I glance over and nearly bump into the closely-peering face of N. Squeaking, I scoot backwards and struggle my very hardest not to fall right off the cot and land, a pile of my own incompetence, on the tile floor. When I sense his long, warm hand guide along my back, nudging me away from the edge, I bite my lip and do not muster the courage to thank him.

Profuse midday light shimmers in through the high Pokemon Center walls. Marlun found us a room on the top floor of the center when we finally arrived at close to four in the morning, and the both of us immediately claimed and passed out in the two open beds, leaving the untouched couch for the boy to sleep in.

The blankets lie undisturbed over the cushions.

I see now that N perhaps did not.

My insides heat up, uncomfortably warm. If he's some sort of sick pervert—_we left everything out for him to take._ Frantically I force a hand out of my blanket-nest and reach down for my bag; N dutifully grabs it with his cursed long arms and hands it to me, a faint smile pocketed in his lip. I don't meet his eyes and tear into it, rummaging through the undisturbed contents, then scowl and toss it to the ground.

His mouth purses. "What did you want it for?"

"I—" I look at it, lying there, a crumpled mass wedged between his legs. He's sitting in the one desk chair of the room, having turned it around to face my bed. "I was worried you had stolen something while Marlun and I slept." Her snores vibrate from the bed crammed against the wall.

The couch remains an unanswered question between us. I glance over to N, and his cheeks flush. "Oh I... r-right. I haven't seen you in so long, after all." He manages a weak chuckle. "Now... why would I steal from you, Shay? You're my...

"I don't... know what you are to me anymore... just that you're infinitely important. I just... I just wanted to watch over you last night and make sure you were okay. I overheard you and your friend, talking about how you had never left your new home before.

"I just wanted to keep you safe."

"W-Why?" I squeak over the fluttering in my stomach. "I don't even remember you! A-And _please_ stop calling me by that name! It's Filloma now. I changed it for a reason."

"What is that reason?" His eyes follow me, large and blue and awash in confusion.

Grimacing, I plow through my blankets and manage a sitting position. I brush down my dress with hot, flustered hands. Oh, the last thing I want is him to see any _more _of me. "Your father. Ghet..." I swallow. "He ruined the name for everybody, and that everybody includes you."

"Oh." His voice is small, forlorn. "You're afraid of my father, aren't you?"

_What_ a question. He discerns from my most certainly annoyed eyes that he must be close to the truth and asks, "Well... why? He taught me everything he knows, Sha—_Filloma. _I'm the king of our people, and I learned how to rule from him. He's the reason I treat my pokemon friends kindly and... knew how to be kind to you, when he brought you home."

As he speaks, a coiling snake curls up my throat and squeezes, harder, harder, pressurizing the fragments of memories, jagged splotches of dark color that I cannot quite make out. The pressure only makes them blurrier, harder to focus on, harder to ascertain.

This of course means it can only get worse.

"Filloma... he treated you better than everyone else. Don't you recall?"

I'm shaking, I'm shaking and this idiot doesn't even see it. Swallowing, I mutter, "No, not really." My fingers furl into fists, clutching at my blanket. "Would I have left if I didn't want to leave?"

"Oh. Oh, I suppose that would make sense..." His brow furrows and head dips, pondering this addendum to whatever atrocity he'd considered our shared reality. His soft voice, his slow gaze—it's...

somewhere deep in my heart, there's this aching when I stare into him, even as he says the very last words I want to hear...

I release a sharp breath. "It was years ago, either way. I don't remember everything. I don't even remember you, n-not really."

Not what he wants me to remember.

"Maybe it's because you aren't letting yourself remember," he offers, his gaze leaping into mine, his mesmerizing eyes snatching hold of me. His hands outstretch, close to my blanket, nearing my own, but he lets the space remain between us and does not dare cross the silent barrier.

I shift in my covers, and a spell breaks; he backs away, leaving room for me to shimmy out of bed and stride over to Marlun's. Her wide-open mouth is smothered by a pillow, her hair a mess spread about her head. Her transceiver sits on a small bedside table; I open up the device, thinking about snapping a photo of my idiot best friend, and accidentally click its one new message—**from Juniper: where are you?**

Squeaking, I drop it and release a breath. Think about shaking her awake. Leave her be. She woke up even earlier to sneak out of her own home, lug over the ladder, then climb into my attic.

No harm in waiting a little longer.

Watching me hesitate, N's voice encircles me from the other side of the chamber. "Filloma... what can I do to ease your worries? I don't... I don't want you to feel anxious around me."

Slowly I turn, facing the strange man who makes my heart clench.

How naive is he to think that it's so simple..?

"Well, I..." I let out a breath. While staring into me, he fidgets with the glowing bracelet around his wrist, the one that releases a comforting azure glow. "I don't know. I wish I remembered you." More of him. The him that he wants me to see. "I'd feel better if I knew more about you, other than this feeling that I... do." There's nowhere else to sit, so I return to my bed, kicking my heels against the mattress. "But at the same time, I don't want to remember. I don't... recall much... but when I think about it, I feel like I'm going to... to throw up, or something."

Again, a flash of confusion in his eyes, blanketed by silky dark concern. "I'm sorry... Filloma." His hands encircle the blanket, and his warmth melds into the space between us. It catches me in my throat, the cozy sensation of his presence, and for a moment I want it. He watches me, watches my breathing spike, and he asks, "Would you like me to tell you what I remember? Then you don't have to look into your memories and throw up."

It's—

I bite into my cheek. "For a random stranger, you're very kind, N."

His laugh reflects back, softer, genuine. "I'm not a random stranger, Filloma..." A quiet, sure smile fills his pale lips. "That's why I'm so kind. You were kind to me too... I just wish you remembered it as well as I do. Then you'd know why I searched for you.

His gaze drops. A hand thoughtlessly nudges my finger and he gasps. "I'm sorry—"

Then he stops talking entirely when I let my small, dainty fingers wrap around his. "It's okay." An implosion of heat suffuses my heart, but I breathe in hard and I let it happen.

N leans ever so slightly closer. His eyes refuse to move in any direction that contains our entwined hands. "O-Okay. Well, um..." I close my eyes and focus on his soft, melodious voice. Almost like a song awaits in the back of his throat. "I met you when we were both quite young. Father—Well—Father said you weren't as young as you appeared to be, but Professor Colress had intentionally made you my age.

"He wanted us to grow up together."

My heart catches. For a second I see it—a man with bright blonde hair and a smooth, pale face, his cologne far too much and far too near me. Suffocation.

His hands are shackled around my body, and he holds too tightly.

The pain comes in a whisper, then a scream: then it's everything.

"Father found you on our adventure to the Sinnoh region. He was searching for children, for ways of expanding his passions. He had received a correspondent there... a boy not much older than me.

"But he thought he should use his time productively, if he was to be traveling so far from home. Professor Colress researched and found the small island off the shore that supposedly held a small tribe of flower-bearing mythical creatures.

"He took the youngest, the only one that did not yet know how to fly."

My heart lurches as the blonde man's hands dig into my soft underbelly.

"Many years of laborious research between Father and Professor Colress culminated in your transformation. Do you..." He breaks off, his hand squeezing over mine. "You remember that part, don't you?"

My head bends into my free hand, the one not fitfully clutching him. "How could anyone forget?" I mutter, then add, "How can you look at their actions and think they're not d-deplorable? It doesn't matter that Ghetsis t-t-t-treated me better than any of the other children..." Now I have a name attached to the hands, the dark memories surging forth and tugging into me, prodding my body, unleashing a horrible light upon my form and leaving me to sit in the metallic pin-needle-shaped pain. Then the indescribable sensation of my body stretching in directions it should not be able to go.

I don't know if they ever told me the glasses-wearing man's name, just left him, a hulking shadow, to stain my mindscape forever.

I remember Ghetsis, too. How could I not?

"Your father loved me," I mutter. "He was going to change the world with me..." Weathered hands, stronger and yet weaker than Colress's unmarred grip, overcome me. Hands that tug me this way and that, and a voice that booms overhead: _THIS GIRL USED TO BE A POKEMON. SEE HOW SHE QUAKES IN THE PRESENCE OF HUMANS NOW. DESPITE MY KINDNESS, SHE IS BROKEN._

_POKEMON ARE NOT OUR FRIENDS. WE ARE HURTING THEM._

_RELEASE YOURS. SAVE THEM FROM THEIR SUFFERING, AND YOU SHALL SAVE YOURSELF._

Between the gnarled shadows of gripping fingers, how could I possibly recall the little green-haired boy who held me in the nighttime, who didn't understand when I told him I was going to run away? Who... proceeded to tell his father and ensure that I would never break away, in a million years, not on my own?

I squeeze breaths through my ragged lungs, pulled by years of greedy adults, lusting over information. "Why did you want to find me so badly..? You destroyed my dreams of leaving that... that... _that_..."

I _can't_—Oh, it's happening again.

I release his hand and curl up into myself, struggling to focus on my breathing, struggling to stay afloat, struggling not to let him out of my sight. Don't drag me back to them, I try to plea through my bleary eyes, don't bring me back or I'll never give you another chance.

Warmth folds over me; I look up and find my head on his shoulder, his body bent over to hold me. "I'm sorry, Filloma... I don't entirely understand."

"Why not?" I rasp, coughing, sucking in air.

"He raised me intending for us to be inseparable. Filloma, I... I never would have met you if he hadn't sought you, chosen you to be by my side as queen." Gosh—The more dreck that spills out of his mouth, the less I can breathe. I'm drowning in his logic. "Isn't that a good thing, then, that he allowed our fates to entwine?"

Oh it's—I can't... I can't... I...

A new voice breaks into my periphery. _N! _The squeak of a pokemon. I cling to it. _N! I know you said not to ruin the moment, but you're scaring her! You are very bad at social cues! I know it's because you have no friends, but please stop this train of thought!_

Suddenly he straightens, relaxing his arms, releasing his grip on me. The shock of his actions fills his face. "I-I am? Am I scaring you, Filloma?"

Oh my gosh. Unable to properly form a response, I tell the pokemon, _Please relay to him that he is definitely scaring me._

_Gladly, _replies the kind pokemon.

Then I catch a wink of black fur from below the desk. A dollop of red marks the spot above its—_her—_head.

The little kitsune scampers up the bed and situates herself beside me, rubbing her warm flank against my shuddering side. _N, you are definitely scaring her. She told me herself._

His mouth parts. "You can still hear them..." He's blinking back something unbelievably bright, something like shooting stars. "D-Don't you remember, Filloma, when you tried to teach me how to speak pokemon?" His hand darts around his bracelet like a reflex. "That's a treasured memory of mine."

_Yeah well, she's currently treasuring the memory of you terrorizing her with your awful social cues._ Snorting, the zorua turns to me and offers a sharp-toothed grin. _Hello! My name is Asha, and I'm N's friend. I take it you're the girl who used to be the shaymin?_

I can't stop the smile that breaks across my lips. _Why hello, Asha. Yes, I am the girl who used to be the shaymin._

_Wow, magical! _She jumps up and down with an excitement I wish I could reciprocate. _You've grown up lots, but you're still so short!_

Her voice lowers, and she gestures to the boy watching our conversation unfold intently. _N, leave the room. I want to say this to Filloma, and Filloma only._ He looks away, a flash of hurt in his otherwise calm gaze, and lets the door shut behind him. _Alrighty righty. He can't hear our voices beyond doors, or any barriers of that sort. Pretty neat, uh?_

_Yes! Thank you very much for all the help, Asha._ She meets my beam with a happy yip.

In the silence between our telepathic conversation, Marlun's transceiver vibrates.

Probably the professor.

I decide to ignore it.

_Of course, Filloma! He's so stupid sometimes. He needs help more than you do, I assure you. _Asha rolls her expressive quartz-colored eyes. _I've been trying to make it clear to him that you don't wanna talk about the Plasma Dukedom, but does he listen? Of course not. 'But Asha, why wouldn't she want to talk about them? Faaaather was so niiiice to her!' Bleh! It's such a horribly obvious facade. He's the one who kidnapped you, after all._

It's such a relief to hear someone understand me that I sag into the bed, releasing a long breath. _Thank you, Asha. Truly. _I swallow. _In truth, I do remember him... but I don't remember him the way I think he wants me to. I just—I hear him down the hall still, telling Ghetsis that I want to run away. I can't just... forget that. He betrayed my trust... my heart._

_What I don't recall is the kindness, Asha._

The zorua winces. _That's funny, because that's all he wants to show you. I know it's hard to tell, but it's true. I'm not saying you should give him a chance, if it's really that hard for you to stomach, but... he's trying. He was so excited when you found him. He was so... hopeful, yet so hurt, when you left._

I groan into my hands. _Well he had it coming for him..._

She groans too. Zoruas have the cutest groans I have ever heard in my life. _Oh, he definitely did._

Finally, a tentative knock against the door, and a muffled question: "May I please come back in? I want to apologize."

My cheeks zing with heat. Asha notices and squeaks a laugh.

"S-Sure. That's fine, N," I mutter, rubbing at my stubborn face.

With his reentry, he spills straight into it. "My most severe condolences! I-I... I didn't mean to upset you. I don't... I..." A release of breath. "I clearly have much more to learn about you."

Then he gazes upon me again, with those dark eyes, the centers bright and captivating... and I let my lips curtsy a tentative smile. "Okay. How about... um... Next time, how about I tell you to stop if your words hurt?" A temporary bandage for our situation.

I still have questions for him. How is he here?  
_What is Ghetsis doing now?_

And—Well—The longer he stays with us, the less time he has to sneak over to his father and betray my heart once again.

N returns my smile. "Okay. I will. I—Again, I'm very sorry, Filloma."

I open my mouth to brush away his concerns—when the transceiver explodes with sound.

It's that old theme song, the one of that old kids' show with the planetary warriors: _Mercury! Venus!..._

Snorting into her pillow, Marlun starts awake. "OH MY GOSH—" Her fingers latch onto the device and jolt into the phone call. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorrryyyyyyy!" Her head snaps away from the transceiver to scream across the room: "FILLMY WHY DIDN'T YOU WAKE ME UUUUUPPPPP!"

I catch my foster mother's face flashing across the transceiver's screen. "You should very well be! Young woman, it's past noon and I have not heard a single word about your adventure yet! Did you arrive at the center safely? Where even _are_ you, if I may ask? How far did you get last night? And—Oh, ah..."

Professor Juniper's slate-gray eyes find me in the back of the small bedroom. "Ah. Why, hello, my dear."

I wave awkwardly.

We all simultaneously decide not to acknowledge the N in the room. Thankfully, Professor Junpier doesn't bother with that.

"I mean..." Her laugh crunches in her throat. "I mean, what I meant to say is, you _ran _away? How, uh, how could you? I uh... uhhh..." Running a hand through her hair, she gives up her facade. "Okay, okay. Enough of that. Your best friend and I conspired to get you out of the house."

My mouth falls open.

Staring at Marlun, I squeak, "WHAT?"

Her cheeks blaze. She offers a paltry, cheeky grin. "Yeah uhhh... maybe that's what happened? Maybe we were tired of you moping all over town and thought an adventure would help you get over your, uh, weird, edgy past?" Then she hands the transceiver to me so I can scream at my foster mother instead.

I carefully keep N out of its periphery as he sits in the desk chair, mute.

"Sweetie, I just... it's clear you have some things you need to work though. And it's clear you wouldn't be figuring any of those things out if nothing changed." Juniper's smile doesn't waver, even as I glare down at her. "It's... hey, don't do that. You're supposed to have _fun_! Have fun and be safe, okay? We still haven't heard back from your grandfather, and, well... you never know if Sinnoh's events could also play out over here. I know you've got Marlun, but... still. Be safe.

"Love you! Talk to you later~"

Then the screen dies out.

I numbly hand the device to Marlun, who begins typing out a massive response to her unread messages from my scheming mother.

Then I stand, pull my pack over my shoulder, and storm out of the room.


	13. Forgotten Village

**Filloma's freaking hysterical. I trust nobody's super weighed down by her backstory? It's... yes it's a lot, but I had to get it out of the way first because a LOT of other crazy things are gonna happen in this story. Her backstory's critical to understanding and foreshadowing what happens next, but... yeah I understand it's a lot to throw at someone. SHE WAS A POKEMON TURNED INTO A HUMAN BY GREEDY PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT HER, AND HER ONLY FRIEND BETRAYED HER TO HER CAPTORS. Yeah yikes.**

**Anyways let's hope this gets less edgy hahahaha**

Chapter 13: Forgotten Village

Once I hurtle down the stairs and exit the center, I realize I've not a clue where I am. Sheepishly I reenter and snag a promotional Unova map, then let the doors shut behind me, a finality.

Burying my head into the map, I track our journey from Nuvema Town and promptly come to the conclusion that something is very wrong with our calculations.

If we walked a straight route from Nuvema to the next town over, the map would mark Accumula with the happy little **You Are Here** lillipup sticker.

Somehow, according to this map, we managed to get so horrendously lost last night in the forest that we took an incredible turn northwest and landed in this town completely outside of the Gym Leader Pathway as marked along the region's standard route. _Bermuda Village_ is its tiny, barely legible name.

I look up and face my surroundings. Open air, tree-lined pathways of gritty soil, a tiny house here, or there, or there, their outlines hidden by tall pine branches and leaves. Sparse population. I can hear the buzzing sound that overwhelms my senses when the world is too quiet to ignore it. Shuddering to myself, I start forward at a fast trot and search the expanses of our new discovery.

What's the point of following the typical gym route anyways? I've little desires to battle with the designated tools of the trade. Besides, if there was some freak anomaly universe in which my strange chronicle was shared as if a book to another, I feel as if my story would be more interesting without such a vanilla arc in my tale.

I have no idea where that thought came from. Flushing, I glance back down at the map.

Bermuda Village is awkwardly sandwiched off the beaten trail of Unova's gym league. It lies in a confusing spot past Accumula Town but almost near the next town after it—Straighton City. It's at such a strange axis that I have no idea how our exhausted selves found the place.

Surrounded in forestry, it's like nobody knows we exist now. We could stay here and never experience the entire rest of the region. It's so secluded, so isolated that I almost do want to stay.

Then Juniper's words slither deep inside of me, wakening, cutting into my insides with frigid, finger-like jabs.

She and Marlun don't want me to stagnate. They want me to change, somehow, on this wayward journey. But... goodness gracious, what do I want?

My mind flits to the melody I heard, then to the boy who sang it, the boy who promptly proceeded to hijack our adventure. Grimacing, I close my eyes, delving into the forest, letting the shadows overcome me and the faint voice of nature lead.

Its singing is so soft... like N's.

My desires lie so intermingled with the black spots of my past that it's hard to pinpoint exactly where anxious fear ends and melds into hope for the future. His gruesome visage continually resurfaces, like a corpse thrown about in a nightmare ocean's stormy waves. Ghetsis, I keep hearing in the back of my head, _Ghetsis—_and that is when I decide to stop thinking about it.

I take a quick survey of my periphery (what are N and Marlun doing?) and allow myself to disappear into the forest's shadow.

Above my head, pokemon are roving about the day's work, white squirrel pachirisus bickering softly with one another. Beneath them, dumpy blue duckletts quack and splash about in the woodland ponds. I follow the sounds as they grow louder, as I delve into the fronds of nature and catch the hurried bumbling of pokemon. They do not bother with the extra precaution of avoiding me; my psyche still registers as one of_ them_. They know, even when my body tries to make me forget.

Deep in the trees, shadowed by swaying branches, I find a large, mossy rock. Great for sitting—there's already a trove of pokemon fighting for purchase of the sunniest spots. In the light, warm weather, this space offers itself as a sanctuary for the natives.

And there's a girl at the very top of the rock, staring into the leaves.

"Ah, it appears I am tardy," I mutter to myself, only for the girl's head to snap back, her thick violet hair spilling over one shoulder.

Her round, brown face opens up, welcoming. "I am not alone, it seems!" I have no idea how she heard me. I was quiet enough that, from the distance between us, I didn't think a soul would register my voice, save for the pokemon. "What is your name?"

I glance up at her. "My name is Filloma." Her charming brown eyes twinkle with the knowledge. "And what is yours?"

She nods to herself, and her massive violet hair shudders. "I'm Iris! I thought I knew everyone who lived here, but I guess not, uh?" Patting at the spot beside her on the rock, she gestures to a bumpy efface I could climb up to join her.

Her cheeriness gives me reason to question whether I should just turn around and leave. But she has my name, and, well, that would be a little rude of me. Besides, I have nowhere else to be. Releasing a breath, I follow her instructions and soon take a spot at the top of the rock, above all the clamoring pokemon. Below my dangling feet lies a nest of bird pokemon, a massive family of unfezants and their little gray children hopping about. One of them is singing, and in her voice I can discern the words.

It is not dissimilar to the melody of N's song, from last night.

Everyone seems to be singing in his tune.

"Are... you from here?" I ask Iris, as she distractedly kicks her feet into the air. "This place seems hard to find."

"Hmmm..." She shakes herself. "Oh, yes, yes! I most definitely am." Her hand raises to point out a tunnel leading into the darker parts of the forest, where the ground is littered with rocks. The shadows of larger, more menacing pokemon lie waiting in the grassy fronds. "I grew up with dragons. It was pretty cool, but, you know, it can be scary. Like when one of them gets mad at you for eating their share, and... you don't have claws... or fire breath... and they're trying to kill you." She giggles off the imminent threat of her death. "But I was _fine_! They were very nice dragons."

I lower my gaze. "How... curious." Perhaps she knows how to speak pokemon as well, then.

The pidove is still singing her sweet song. Something about it makes my heart ache. "I'm... from Nuvema Town. Nothing as exciting as your upbringing. It's a little ways away from here. You probably haven't heard of it. _We_ aren't interesting whatsoever." And that is precisely what I liked about it... but now I'm here.

Now I'm... here.

Iris shrugs, her shoulder bumping into mine. "That's fun. What brought you to Bermuda Village?"

"Uhh... My friend decided that we're going on a pokemon adventure, but we took a wrong turn late last night. We, um, snuck out early in the morning, and somehow we ended up here."

Iris stares at me for a long while. Then her face breaks up into virile laughter. "Wow! Well, I welcome you to my home!" And she laughs for some time, but then her voice drops, and her eyes narrow, and her hand reaches deftly into my personal space to fidget with one of the crimson flowers in my hair. She watches the cringe spread across my complexion, and her brows slightly raise.

"I've been meaning to ask, Filloma, but... your hair sure is interesting. How'd you get these nice flowers?"

I spew out a weak chuckle. "Oh, they're fake." It's the easiest answer, just within reach, to throw at a curious onlooker. "I just got them stuck in my hair, so they're a little difficult to remove. I—Heh—Please don't pull." Blossoming throbs spread within my skull.

"Oh, ah, sorry." Her hands drop away. "Just curious." But this strange matter remains in her gaze, something that keeps returning to me, something that keeps almost... sizing me up, like she's trying to piece me into some sort of puzzle in her head.

Like there's a reason she invited me to her rock. A reason she's poking holes into my questions, peering closer, tugging at me like a specimen.

I ultimately decide that I don't want to keep speaking with Iris. "I'll, uh, see you." I get up and wipe the dirt off of my white dress, then hurriedly clamber down the rock in my boots. They are not the greatest climbing gear, but I am desperate and nervous, so I somehow make it back down and out of Iris's periphery in rather quick timing.

Her voice floats around me, leaving me with one promise:

"Pokemon League is on the far left pathway. Don't get them confused on your pokemon adventure.

"Nice t'meet'cha, Filloma. Have a good trip, will ya?"

Confused... with what?

But the thing that catches me off-guard is the way she whispers my name, almost dropping the "oh". It's like... I've heard it before. Somewhere else. Of course now I don't remember it, but once upon a time, I must have, the way it clutches around my heart and drags it through my bones.

With that fantastically frustrating question lodged into my skull, I stomp through the forest and emerge by the Center once again. Up ahead I notice the path leers left not much farther off, although there is this vague impression of a straight path as well: beaten down grass and crushed flowers.

The other path...

While I'm looking away, a hand slams down over my shoulder. I squeak; Marlun's pink face smirks in my periphery. "Don't run away, Fillmy! _How_ many times do we gotta go over the fact that _I_ have the phone and _you_ don't! If one of us goes missing, the other is basically defenseless, so uh _stop_ doing that. It has literally been twice in almost as many chapters—wait I mean days. Chapters?" While Marlun is off muttering to herself, I catch N behind her, his face quiet, unreadable.

"Hi, N," I try, raising a hand.

His eyes alight. "Hello, Filloma. What did you find outside? We could not locate you for some time."

"Ah, I..." I press my lips together. "There was a girl in the forest. She had lots of animals surrounding her. One of the pidoves sang a pretty song. That's about it."

"That's a terrible story," Marlun intercedes. "You need to learn some storytelling skills." She rolls her eyes. "However, I will excuse you on the account of there being a cute girl within the premises of your tale. Please tell me how cute she was."

"Marlun..." We have better things to—

"This is me begging you. I don't feel like getting on the ground, but if I did, I would."

I let out a breath. "Aren't you silly." She offers me her biggest, most despondent grin, so I sigh and oblige. She'll keep complaining about it if I don't. "I guess she was marginally cute. She had really poofy purple hair, which made me wonder how hard it would be to hug her, and this like... nice outfit on, I guess. It was pink. Uhh... she had a round face. Brown skin. It was okay."

Marlun thinks on this. "We may have to go talk to her again."

"No we—Marlun." A scowl shreds across my face. "_Mar_lun. Did you hear anything about the hair? She will literally be impossible to hug. Im_poss_ible. Just give up on this one. There's like a hundred more girls in Unova and this is only the first one we've met so far."

Marlun growls under her breath. "But we don't know how cute the other girls are!"

"Marlun they will be cute because you have no standards—"

"I _hate_ it when you're right... uggghhhhh..." She scrunches her face up when she blinks, and it's somehow the most passive aggressive thing I've ever seen her do. "I wanna meet other cute girls... but also... I wanna meet _this_ cute girl...

Her pout slowly, steadily upturns, morphing into an ill-minded grin. "Well, Fillmy. You've run off twice, so I think it's about time you owed me." Her pink cheeks heat with a lustful flare, and her eyes glimmer as she asks in her sickest, sweetest tone, "Will you please do me the kindness of introducing us to the cute girl?"

"Uh." I open my mouth. Shut it. Swallow. The stickiness is in my stomach, churning nastily through my veins. "I don't really want to. C-Can't we just—"

Marlun's arms cross over her ample chest; she's replaced the togepi tee with her lilac grimer sweatshirt, the words "pretty ugly, or ugly pretty?" jiggling beneath the image of the mucky grape kool-aid colored pokemon. The grimer's massive grin combats her own. "No. We can't _just_. Let's go, Fillmy."

Groaning, I roll my eyes and step ahead. "Fine. But only because you're so annoying, and I'm tired of it." Marlun sniggers something about my own irritable qualities under her breath. N, bless his silent heart, moves close to me and asks softly what this is all about.

Our eyes meet; I catch the glimmer of my own frustration mirrored in his enchanting blue gaze.

Marlun dips ahead of me, watching me point into the forest and following the imaginary line forward. While we linger back, my fingers nervously clutch around the flowers in my hair. "She... the girl... she looked at me like she knew they weren't just... barrettes, like she already could tell they were real. I..." I swallow, pitching my voice low. "I don't know if we can trust her."

N's eyes flush. "Wh-Why didn't you say so to your friend? Surely she would listen to such an endeavor."

"No, no..." I sigh. "I think she's more concerned with the girl right now. You don't know her like I do. She'd hear my concerns, but she _really_ wants to be in a relationship. She's, uh, romantically stunted, and incredibly hopeful as to remedying it." Glancing after her, I break into a weak laugh. "Besides, her attraction to this girl doesn't concern me, so long as I don't have to be near her." Maybe Iris the dragon-girl will be so strange that Marlun will absolutely drop her hopes and dreams in order to get away as quickly as possible.

It occurs to me that perhaps the opposite will happen. Then Iris and Marlun will date—fall in love—_get married—_and I'll be stuck with this awful creepy hair-examining lady as a best friend in-law of sorts.

Well. Darn. Um.

Hopefully the dragon thing will weird Marlun out.

Oh who am I kidding... I'm the one who told her she has no standards...

To the shock of warmth on my shoulder I gasp—then look over, and it's just N, his fingers gingerly resting against the cloth of my sleeve. "I... I'm sorry. I wanted to ask, Filloma... what are you thinking about?" He steps closer, just slightly, and his head tilts down toward me, filling the space between us with the warmth of his body and the gentle pine smell he carries from all the trees he's been singing in. "Your eyes, they... become so full, like rainclouds. I just want to know what it is you're carrying inside of you."

I try to pull myself away, but I realize I cannot. The sheer, raw honesty of his question leaves my entire body aching. "I..." I whisper, my voice shaking, "I'm not... thinking about anything much. Just... Just afraid that my best friend will marry a scary dragon girl who likes to pull at my hair."

He breaks contact to whisper "oh" and loose a gentle laugh. "That's... much sillier than I was expecting. You're silly, Filloma."

My entire face heats and I cannot tell if it's because of the compliment or the insult. "Uh... o-okay." Just behind him, I catch the shadowy form of Asha crawling out from behind a tree, as if ready to jump in.

But over his shoulder, there is a stir.

Someone exiting one of Bermuda Village's sparse households, far away on the path that Iris said not to take. Split between trees, just hidden save for the swishing of grayed, carefully-painted robes.

My blood runs cold.

N watches my eyes widen and turns, but the person has already dispersed. "What is it, Filloma?"

"I... I saw someone."

He doesn't bother to doubt me, just takes my hand and moves us forward through the shimmering midday sunlight that has somehow grown frigid and distant. He leads me past the fronds and into the trees, as Asha darts in somewhere between our encounter and my sighting, and we race to the fragment of my past that has resurfaced.

The soreness pervades my mind, starting in my head and slowly traveling, bruises down my arms and legs and patterning across my soft stomach, once the underbelly of a squishy pokemon.

_What is a lord of the Plasma Dukedom doing here?_


	14. The Forest's Bitter Daylight

**Just wanted to say thanks for still reading, everyone c: If you're here, OMG, hello! I trust you've been doing well and that you enjoy Filloma as much as you did Niri (although I understand if you don't because I mean she's got Lucaro and we just don't have Lucaro, man, I miss him so much haha)**

Chapter 14: The Forest's Bitter Daylight

Upon reaching the trail, I slow down, gasping. "Wait—N, wait." To my shuddery call, he eases, altering his gait to match my own. A flurry of color flutters through his gaze, questions and fears, and I shake my head slowly, fighting to refill my lungs. "It's... I saw someone in robes. _Their _robes." Plasma robes. His eyes light up.

"Really. How... strange. I didn't know they left the Castle." N's face crunches together, a harsh motion that disrupts his otherwise soft, porcelain features. "I thought... I thought Father did not allow it."

"Perhaps they're looking for you, then." Since you clearly don't know anything, I stop myself from adding. What other sinister plans could be formulating in the depths of the Plasma Castle, just outside of N's ignorant periphery, just aching for him to see and yet sorely _just_ being missed despite its opaque presence?

At the thought of it, my mind wavers, a banner of words stringing together before my eyes: _The Dukedom of Plasma Bloodline—We are connected by our hearts. All who seek a perfect world are welcome._

If this robed figure finds me... they could... _they could..._

But if we leave them to their own means, there's no telling what they will do... and I know, I _know_ what they are capable of.

And... there's something else I'm trying to find, nestled within the darkest nadir of the Dukedom's soul. Someone who—who saved me.

It couldn't have been N. N forsook me.  
But there was someone else.

I remember it, stronger, harder, as the name Iris almost called me circulates in my mind—_Filma. _Someone called me that. Someone called me that... and these Plasma lords must know who.

My resolve tightens around my chest. I have no pokemon, no allies of my own... but there is something else. I sense it happening as the grass beneath me weakly reaches out to the call of my fading power. So little of it remains, but... I refuse to imprison a pokemon within a red-and-white shell. That is something the Plasma Dukedom and I share.

The thought of it strikes me, baffling, but I shake my head. Don't dwell on it now.

"N. They entered through this door." I raise an unnaturally pale hand and gesture toward the looming silhouette of a small village home. Have they taken control of the people who live here? Or is the village itself a farce intended to _fake_ a village's existence, keeping Dukedom protocols hidden beneath these silent, unsuspecting trees?

I glance to him and say, "I'm going to follow."

His brow furrows, his nervous fingers diving for the strange cobalt bracelet around his wrist. "F-Filloma, you have nothing to protect you. Please let me go in first at least, they wouldn't expec—"

"They wouldn't expect me either." I stomp over his words, seething. "And there are things I need to ask them that they may not speak of in your presence." Things they want to keep hidden from their prized prince's wide, innocent eyes.

His mouth moves, but he cannot quite fit the words through. Then finally he emits the quietest whine and mutters, "I am afraid for your safety." Even now as we stand behind the trees ringing around the obscured village, I notice the subtle signs of robes fluttering in the breeze, moving from house to house. I didn't just happen to catch sight of a robed figure—they're everywhere, breaths away from surrounding us.

"Stay here and come in if necessary. I'll..." My eyes dart to and clutch at Asha's lithe form, from where she sits patiently at N's feet. "Asha, could you come with me, and wait near the house just in case?"

The zorua jumps to her feet, paintbrush tail swishing. _Of course! I'm curious as well. I wasn't allowed into N's castle. Sat outside, like a sad little rock._

Now is not the time for laughter, and yet my lips threaten to give. "I think you were safer outside, Asha."

She rolls her sassy red eyes. _You're probably right, but you really hate to see it._

Despite his closeness in proximity, N watches this exchange, his gaze bouncing between us as if he is excluded, a bystander. I look up to him and ask, "Is that alright?" and the suddenness as to which the light falls upon his face is breathtaking.

He almost doesn't feel... real. And yet, when I stand here next to him, sharing the same air, living under the same sky, fighting for the same future... I sense something akin to his heart beating, something like the life rushing profusely through him, something like his undeniable presence.

I swallow.

He wasn't the one who saved me.  
Someone else did.

Someone else whose brown skin and dull eyes compel me closer, and I don't think it was Iris, but... wh-who else could it be? Oh, I've opened these thoughts from their cages so little that I can hardly piece them back together now when I actually want to see them, relive them.

But it may have been Iris. The reason she was raised by dragons may be connected to the reason I am here today.

Finally, with a reluctant nod, N murmurs, "But please be safe."

"You'll be right here." I dig my boot into the earth connecting us. "Not far away at all."

Then I step into the perimeter of the house, Asha nimbly darting between trees, sticking to the dark undersides that do not taste the sun. N's silhouette stands behind me, a forgotten shadow, and he waits with a stiffness overflowing his form, rendering him a stark statue.

When I glance back, the sharpness of his worry clutches at my chest, tugging me closer. Scoffing, I shake my head and face forward, to my future. My fists furl, and, gently, I test the reach of my nature-given gift: focus on a singular strand of grass, implore permission, gently, gently, _gently_ weave my own psyche into its being and nurture until, all too quickly, a spurt of grass grows at a shocking rate between my feet.

I gasp, my cheeks burning and yet somehow frigid to the touch.

That's it. _That's_ it. Now somehow I must harness this power into a much more useful medium rather than elongated grass.

Asha watches all of this happen with a keen eye. _Huh. That's sure something._

_It's the... the old part of me, capable of encouraging nature into a stronger form. It's not much anymore, however. I was hoping I'd have something a little more promising, but... w-well, no matter._

I spent so long hiding from the Dukedom it's a little surprising how quickly I jump to their arrival. But maybe that's why I hid from them. Maybe it had nothing to do with fear of them and everything to do with fear of myself. Fear of what I would do if I saw them.

Today I-I suppose I'll learn the consequences.

Surging ahead, I step to the front porch of the homely wooden shack that houses a menacing nightmare. My breaths come out as quickly as I try to recapture them. Sweat pools in the pits of my clenched hands, slicking my palms. The silence of the village has overcome me, and all I can hear is the sound of utter nothing in the very back of my head. The faintest breeze tugs along my skin, and I shudder in place.

Slowly, as if outside of my own control, my arm raises. There it hesitates, on the cusp of an irrevocable decision.

There is a faint tinge of pain behind my eyes. Cold, like tears, yet the tears do not come.

When I exhale, I pump as much air as possible out of my fidgeting lungs. Then I knock with a barred fist, the smack of wood cutting into my knuckle and budding a violent lilac bruise.

Somehow the forest grows quieter... as if it is listening to my every movement.

Oh dear.

The house has grown still, and any slight sounds indicating movement have chilled to icy still.

My cheeks pale.

Nothing left to do.

Forcibly I knock into the door, one two three four times.

They have no reason to let me in. But I do not want to break into the house...

The moment I turn away to assess the surroundings is a mistake. My eyes alight to a nearby tree just as my entire head _shifts_ into that direction, shoved towards it by a dull, aching force. The sky spirals out of the atmosphere above and comes crashing below me when I hit the ground, the wince tight in my teeth. I struggle to pull myself up as Asha's growl breaks into the air, alongside a shriek from the one her teeth have sunk into. My breathing settles to the beat of the throbbing in the base of my skull.

The robed figure looms over me. I can't make out a face through the combined efforts of their hood and my blurry pain. There is a displacement of breath and a cringe. "Sh-Shay... it can't be..." Then a slow, soft moan as covered arms collapse to the head and clench around the obscured face. "No... Lord Ghetsis w-w-will _kill_ me if he knows what I've..."

The man slinks to his feet and releases a hideous groan.

I am above him now.

My fingers twitch and the grass wraps around him, slowly at first, then faster, faster as he does not move and does not try to stop the fronds from tying his hands together, locking around his arms. I push at the wills of the trees, trying to convince them to bend over and shove the man into his house, as to hide his crumpled form from the rest of the village, but they laugh and do not budge. So much for nature powers.

Thankfully someone had already blanketed my side. N, his hand hesitantly reaching up to touch my cheek. "Filloma, I-I'm sorry I didn't arrive in time. Are you alright?" He whispers it, the question fleeting in his pale, withered eyes.

I shake my head. "Don't worry. I made my own mistake."

He visibly relaxes, but he still mutters, "I should have helped in some manner..."

"You helped by giving me a little bit of space."

"You mean I helped by letting you sustain an attack," he says, his tone low and unable to hide the self-disgust.

My eyes dart back to the man on the ground as I struggle not to let my mouth explode in laughter. The pain is a dull reminder of my bad decisions, but in the end it appears the man has crumpled to the very act of seeing my face.

I wonder why. It's not like he has to tell Ghetsis what he did... He could have killed me and in the same breath notify his lord that he'd never seen me. Nobody would have to know.

How peculiar. Perhaps Ghetsis has finally unlocked the ability of controlling his people like toy puppets.

With N's help and Asha as lookout, we heft and carry the man into his household, slamming the door shut behind us. It's of course entirely possible that another lord of the Dukedom saw us, but the silence of the village convinces me that we could have been hidden by the trees and the deafening quiet.

And, well, Iris and Marlun aren't in the periphery, so there's not a lot of other options. I can't imagine what they're doing while we're tying up a stranger but I sure hope it's not anywhere near as exciting. The thought of their potential makes my stomach curdle.

I hate the fact that I put that thought into my own head.

"Filloma..." N's voice, the clutch of longing pulling at my heart.

His eyes pull to me; lip curling, I think I already know what he's asking. "I wonder where Marlun and Iris are, and I hope for the sake of all good things that it isn't something too mature for a younger audience."

"A younger..?" His brow furrows, but the smile comes spilling outwards anyways. "Thank you. I like knowing what you're thinking."

I almost say the same of him until it occurs to me that his thoughts are probably almost entirely about me. To Asha's weak giggle from the outside, I realize I have struck a nerve without either of us acknowledging it. In the end I decide against bringing it up.

I hope I'm able to reconcile with the one who saved me soon...

Our eyes return to the man slumped over on the floor. Despite our banter and despite our tying him up, he has yet to respond to any of it. Gingerly I raise a foot and nudge at him with a toe. To his grunt, my heart pulsates: I'm not sure with relief of dissatisfaction, and that distinction makes my body freeze.

"You're one of the lords of Plasma, aren't you?" I ask, chipping into our frigid tension.

With a groan, the man concedes. "Yes. I am." His voice has slacked and sticks to the back of his throat, gritty and difficult to follow. "Killing me would be the greatest mercy you could give me, my lady."

I open my mouth. Then I close it.

"Wh-What?"

"Kill me," he moans into the floorboards.

There's a cold little trickle in the back of my hands that threatens to comply. Angrily I clutch my fingers into fists, shaking away the shivers. "N-No. I need answers, n-n-not corpses." As much as a tiny part of me wants to, a part of me I hadn't realized was lodged deep within.

No wonder I can't quite forgive N, nor forget what he did to me.

_No wonder I didn't want to find Plasma again._

This... This sensation, this chilling touch that has begun to infiltrate my very bones... it's both sickening and an addiction.

I try to rationalize it. Of course I want to hurt them after what they did to me—but it won't get me anywhere. _I need answers, not corpses._

I ask, "Why are you here?"

With a moan, he complies. "Lord Ghetsis sent us here. We are prepared to deploy into the public eye and preach the good name of our prince at any moment's notice."

Oh... goodness. "Have you been searching for me?"

"Yes... and no." His hands shift in the bindings, less to relieve tension and more to feel, it appears, the touch of my power. Why else would he rub against the grass bindings so... incessantly? "We are not allowed to hurt you, nor threaten you, nor touch you in any way. Any of these infractions will cause a certain death." A part of me almost asks if he's allowed to look in my general direction.

I break in before he can explain—"How would Ghetsis know?" The crunch of his name on my mouth burns an oddly satisfying kindle of hatred deep inside of me.

"Because Ghetsis knows all."

I wait for something more in-depth. Nothing comes.

Okay.

My breathing tightens. "Do the other lords know I am here?

Pause. I'm anxious, sweat slick on my skin, sticking to me like lies. "D-Don't make me repeat myself."

"_Yes_," he finally cries, his words a feeble crutch that, once released, make him sag into the ground.

"How," I breathe, hopefully before they get here with whatever sorts of mechanisms they have present to capture me. Digging my nails into my skin, I remind myself that I am not longer susceptible to a certain spherical red-and-white prison.

All he manages is "the link that binds us all" before the door slams straight to the opposite wall of the household. My eyes fight into the rest of the room, searching for a blunt object, a weapon, a—anything.

_There_.

A poke ball resting against the bedside table. I scramble over to it and release the pokemon, hurriedly throwing its ball beneath my foot, waiting for the right moment. Destroy the mechanism too soon and I could harm the pokemon. "Please help me" I manage through the shaking in my body, watching as a form encased in red slowly materializes, lodged in midair, its small form quickly settling.

The poke ball is beneath my foot. I gingerly press my weight into it, then—

_NO PLEASE STOP! THAT'S MY HOME YOU'RE CRUSHING!_

I—I gasp, and in my shock I stop. _Wh-What?_

_DON'T BREAK MY POKE BALL!_

It's the pokemon, the—elgyem in front of me, his green hide sparkling erratically, his bright green eyes flush with emotion.

If... it's what he wants...

My eyes flee to the commotion, three men filing into the household. The elgyem's thin arms raise, and his colorful fingers dance. A faintly luminescent wall erects between them and us. N takes to my side, gazing up at the pokemon that just bought us some precious time, and his eyes falter back to me. Asha must be outside, either... hurt... or surprised, trying to fight a way in.

All we have is this tiny elgyem.

_Marlun_

"Why, hello!" I call, jumping into the clearing. That must be the girl—the one with the super floofy purple hair. She's still sitting there, her cute feet swaying in the faint forest breeze. _Gosh_, she's cute. So cute. She's got this pink skirt and a pretty flowy lacy shirt and her eyes are like—like _eyes_, but cuter than every other pair of eyes I've ever seen, like ever. So she's basically The One. Not just that but The Perfect One.

The girl stares down at me, her brow arched in a curious little question mark. "Hi?" she asks, like she's not sure if she should greet me.

Zipping over to the foot of the rock efface, I plant my hands over its cool sides, just below the girl's swaying feet. Iris. That's her name. Iris. I can almost but not quite see up her skirt—_not that I would if I could_. Definitely wouldn't do that. Nope. Not me. "My name is Marlun! You're Iris, aren't you?"

Her brows shoot straight up her forehead. I probably shouldn't have told her that I already know her name—but I just wanted to make sure this was the girl Fillmy was talking about. A better plan would've been to ask for her name, but it is too late and I am too impulsive to make the right decision first.

Finally Iris asks, her voice thin and gentle and resting on the cusp of a threat, "How do you know my name?"

"Oh uh—My friend told me she saw a cute girl in the clearing right here." I throw her my biggest, cheekiest, happiest smile. "You saw her, didn't you? She has these weird, uh, flower barrettes in her hair that always get tangled up in there. Very distinctive."

Steadily her guard lowers. She does recall my best friend. Good sign. "Ah, okay. Well, hello to you as well! I'm... Yes, I am Iris."

She's quieter than Fillmy made her seem. Fillmy talked these big imaginative horrors, morphing Iris into a secretive witch villain, someone lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to ruin Fillmy's life. Like she knew Fillmy's secret.

She's just freaking _cute_. Fillmy needs some therapy or something.

Gazing into her warm brown gaze, I ask, "Are you single?" because I am very subtle like that. Hey, there's no reason to wait and feel her out; I need to know _now_ if there's a chance.

Her cheeks explode pink. _Geez_, who is she, Fillmy? It's not that embarrassing at all.

Swallowing, she says, "Well, yeah. I mean I grew up pretty isolated, so it's not like there's anyone out there who would—"

"Then would you like to be _my _girlfriend?"

I trample over her voice, but only because my question is incredibly important.

Iris stumbles, slipping off of her rock perch. Frantically I step forward and reach out my arms, grabbing and holding her snug. The way she seamlessly falls into my embrace and lands without a wound to her name like a fairy princess just tells me that this was the smoothest pick-up ever and there's no way I will ever top this. Basically if she says no, it means that the universe is fighting tooth and nail to keep me from ever dating a cute girl (or boy... or anyone in general).

Yes, there was Fillmy, but... I've decided that Fillmy is altogether way too weird to make a good girlfriend. Plus she's moody. I can't handle moodiness in a significant other. Makes my hands all clammy, my thoughts a befuddled mess, and I constantly feel like I'm messing things up. Moody people... ugh.

Iris gazes into me, our noses practically touching, and my thoughts of Fillmy all but melt away. Her breathing is soft, rhythmic, and I feel it on my lips. Her soft umber skin is warm to the touch, lustrous.

And Fillmy was wrong. Her massive purple hair is poofy, but it is also incredibly soft.

Finally Iris whispers, "You know what, why not? I'll be your girlfriend."

It takes everything in the world to keep me from screaming into her face.

As it is I grab her tightly and Iris squeaks "No no too tight! Too tight, Marlun!" and I awkwardly release her, laughing into her hair.

"Sorry, sorry. I'm just—I am very excited." My mouth squirms into a nervous grin. "So uh, what kindsa things do you do around here, Iris? Show me all the stops! It can be our first date!" Okay yes maybe I am horny for the first date—but _everyone_ knows that first dates like to end with first kisses.

And I would love to know the feel and taste of Iris's subtly pink lips. My priorities are in check, that's all.

Iris gasps, breaking into a marvelous little spring of warm rushing laughter. "Um... okay, sure! You can meet my dragon parents! That's, um, that's a thing people do on first dates, right?"

I am about to _lose it_. "You have DRAGON PARENTS? And didn't tell me... UNTIL NOW!"

Her eyes keep flickering over to me, hesitant, questioning, but it's almost hidden behind the clever quirk in her lip. "I'm sure they would like to meet my new girlfriend too."

And thus I proudly take my new girlfriend's soft little brown hand, and we take the worn trail beaten with broken sticks and rocks to the cavern labyrinth Iris calls her home.


	15. The Facade's Shadow

**Hey, I'm back!**

**I've been using all this extra time granted by COVID to start my dream story, this tale I've had trapped in my skull for years now, but I'm stuck right now so I figured might as well use my creative juices for SOMETHING while I try to figure that out in my other story.**

**Also the sooner I get through this arc the sooner I get to the stuff that I am very very excited to write about.**

Chapter 15: The Facade's Shadow

_Marlun_

It appears that Iris's dragon parents are fully capable of understanding her words, but the moment I open my stupid mouth, they're staring at me with their sharp starry yellow eyes. Their bodies are massive, tangled heaps of three-headed fury, navy blue and black like the night sky, and their red violet ruffs have been braided up and down by their human child at some point or another.

Iris's small brown fingers tighten around my hand when she tells her parents, "Yes, this is my new girlfriend Marlun. Sh-She wanted to meet you." Her mouth brawls itself, tumbling into this big tidy smile, but anyone with eyes can see it wobble, threatening to fall right off her face.

The dragons make low, guttural sounds that cause Iris's brow to furrow. "I-I know, I know what you told me. But c'mon, can't I be allowed to have one girlfriend? Just one! Just _one_! I have literally listened to _all_ of your other rules _perfectly_." Angrily her fingers tighten about my own, and what I took as her insecurity now flattens out into a sneer over her lips.

My chest tightens.

She's fighting for me. For _me_.

And I literally just asked her out like ten minutes ago.

If Fillmy was here, she would serve as some dour reality check where all of this flutters apart before my very hands, in spite of how tightly I cling to Iris.

Scamp mewls somewhere in my knapsack. She'd probably have some annoying comment for that too.

I grit my teeth, standing my ground.

While the dragon parents loom silently and all broody-like in front of me, I make a giant bow, my wavy, unruly hair flopping all over my face. "I'm Marlun, and I plan to take great care of your daughter, scary dragon parents!"

The way they grunt and glower over one another after my introduction tells me that they comprehend me just as well as I _don't_ them. I glance to Iris, for a cue, for some sort of reassurance, but she's just staring blankly ahead. I sort of nudge at her, but she's short like Fillmy and I end up catching her chin with my shoulder. I wince and squeak an apology to her; she flushes, shaking her gentle head. What a conversation.

She surprises me by speaking. "I'm okay. I'm just..." She keeps her voice low, subtle. "They're trying to decide what they think of you. Currently it's up to the grimer sweatshirt you're wearing. They don't know if they like it or not." She breaks off to say, "It's 'pretty ugly, or ugly pretty', Mom," I guess because the one thing dragon parents can't do is read.

Iris wrinkles her nose. The temptation to kiss or at least poke it is overwhelmingly strong. She glances my way to say, "Okay, yeah, they think it's funny." A low, lumbering growl escapes from one dragon parent's maw, and I freeze in place, every last hair standing up on my arms. Giggling, my new girlfriend leans against me. "Hey, that's a good sign! They're laughing!"

I swallow hard. "They sound like they're preparing to eat me."

One of them releases a low burst of steam from a nostril, then utters something low and guttural. Iris slaps a hand over her mouth and attempts to quiet her burst of laughter. It must be at me, at something her parents said, I realize, and my pinky red face smolders.

"What did they just say," I groan out the corner of my mouth.

"Humans aren't very tasty."

I blink, struggling to breathe. "Is that just a guess, or are they speaking from experience."

"Oh, don't worry, Marlun!" Iris's cheery voice does little more than sicken my stomach. "They stopped eating people after adopting me!"

Oh.

Oh _great_.

I consider whether taking a girl out on a date is worth the risk of my very life ending. Then I hang my head, dropping it into my free hand, because I look into myself and all I see is the longing for Iris's lips to grace my own.

"'Tis a worthy death," I mumble into my palm, tears trickling down my face.

"Haha, what was that?" Iris asks, but she receives no coherent answer.

Another loud grumbling sound emerges from the dragons' throats, and they shuffle out of the way of their cavern's opening, allowing entry. Iris gasps and squeaks, "They say you can hang out for a little while! Isn't that great?" and I shrug because I have no idea how great that is.

"Are they having me for dinner," I add under my breath, to which Iris shakes her head and replies, "No, they didn't prepare enough meat to have someone join us tonight. Sorry."

Well.

Well that's better than what I was thinking. At least _I'm_ not the meat.

Ducking my head and refusing to meet their eyes, I let my chestnut hair obscure my face and Iris take the lead. We stumble through the semi-darkness of her cold, gray home, turning left at the first fork in the tunnel, entering a small enclosed chamber. A little skylight, shaped like a crescent moon, allows light to filter in. It's too small for anyone to fall through, though I imagine more than one nary person's foot has tripped upon the hole.

Then I let my eyes settle on her room. She's got a pair of blankets arranged like a dragon's freaking nest in one corner, a couple small posters affixed to the walls with careful precision and sticks, a few stuffed pokemon littering the floor.

"It's nice," I murmur, because I also recognize that this is her home.

Iris snorts.

I glance over to her, the confusion rampant on my face.

"You thought I lived here?" she asks, breaking into a bout of laughter.

I sputter to a start. "But your parents—"

"Yeah, they helped raise me, but I have a real room back in the village. It's a loooong story." She jumps into her blanket pile, then pats the spot beside her. I gingerly situate myself by her side, enjoying the gnarly sensation of every last rock under my butt.

We're alone now. I sense the dragon footsteps lumbering back into their home, one of them glancing at us through the shadows with those sharp starlight eyes, then passing and leaving us to ourselves.

Slowly my hand sneaks over to Iris's side. She doesn't move, but her eyes fall to it, watching my fingers hesitate a breadth above her thigh. To her nigh-imperceptible nod, I let it rest, and she releases a sharp breath.

"You're pretty, Iris," I whisper, and she breathes with a sudden ravenous desire for air.

Her eyes dart to mine, and she stares deep into me, drinking from my image.

She's smaller than she looks, sinking into her pink-and-yellow dress. Her hair's massive and soft and altogether adds a height to her that isn't really there. I feel it beneath my palm, the smallness of her form. My heart slams against my chest, driving me to come nearer, to smother her in my—

But no. Oh my gosh, no. She would probably die if I went as fast as my body's begging me to. Just look at her, look at her gentle, oval face. Look at her wide eyes, full of my visage.

I don't want to scare her.

I also don't know what I'm doing, so, uh, kind of don't want to ruin things as soon as they began.

Iris takes a long breath, breaking our heated silence. "Marlun?"

The way her high-pitched tone curls around my name makes me scoot a little closer to her, my free hand resting just beside her.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Marlun..." Her voice is low, humming with my presence. "I've never gotten to explain myself to anybody... let alone my girlfriend." She flinches and blushes as the words come out, and I wait, letting her grow comfortable enough to speak again. "Can I... Can I please tell you about myself? I never get to... share myself with other people."

I sputter—"S-S-Sure! Of course!" Dude, anything for her. She's so freaking cute, my heart wants to explode.

Besides, I have no need to talk about myself. The sweatshirt says it all.

Swallowing, I settle in beside her, watching her fold and then unfold her hands, wringing them out and letting them land on her lap, only to rub against my own well-placed hand. Her eyes shoot wide open and she yanks her fingers away, then pauses when the realization hits her in the face.

A reluctant little hand overlaps my own. She lets it stay there, then releases a low breath. Her free hand flecks to her face, where it combs back a fat purple curl of hair.

"So?" I start, as she stays quiet, lying within her own shadow.

"Oh. Um..." There's a hesitant laugh edging out of her mouth, broken off by her own trepidation. "I'm not sure where to start. I've, um. I don't get much of a chance for things such as this."

I awkwardly raise a hand and gesture her on. She shakes herself, mutters a little "I can do this," then straights up and stabs her eyes into me. They cling desperately to the sight of me, utilizing me either as a pincushion or a point of reference.

"So um. _So_." Her voice cracks. We laugh in this quiet, muted hush. "I grew up with dragons. Sort of. Half dragons, half Bermuda Village." Her eyes flutter, wide with the presence of my self. "You know, they always told me not to let travelers wander here. Not to let them near me."

Breaking in, I try to fit what few pieces I've got into the bigger picture of her memories. "Is that why your parents were so upset with my... uh, being here?"

"Y-Yeah." A thunderous snarl overcomes her face, lowering her brow, smearing her mouth. "But I've always been the only kid here. People always looking down on me, always telling me to sit still, not to get my nose into their business..." That snarl shreds her mouth wide open, baring her surprisingly sharp teeth. "It was lonely.

"I always liked my parents—my dragon parents, I mean. I never knew my real parents... whoever they are. Hah, I only know they exist because _I_ do." She giggles weakly, forcefully shaking her head. "It seems like I've lived my whole life here, though that can't possibly be true..."

Gently I rest my hand to her side, tucking myself against her smaller form. When she doesn't move, doesn't push me back, I let the hand on her thigh pull away and tug her into an embrace. "That does sound really lonely," I murmur into her soft hair. "I used to make fun of Fillmy—that's my best friend, the girl you saw earlier—since she and I were the only people our age in our village, but at least we had each other." Even if she was a terrible kisser and did _not_ learn with practice, nor would she allow constructive criticism.

Gosh. The relief pushes me in the chest, encouraging me to sink into my cute new girlfriend whose lack of moody tendencies is already saving me my precious peace of mind.

"At least you had each other," murmurs Iris. She pauses, choking on a laugh. "Your friend—Filloma, was it—she was _weird_."

"Yeah." I cackle. "She's a total weirdo. Sorry if she put you off. She needs therapy or something." Hooooo boy, and she needs lots of it. Like maybe twice a week instead of once a week. Then again, knowing her, she'd end up convincing herself that her therapist was plotting against her to _ruin her life_, so the therapy would only make her worse.

She needs someone who can put up with her.

That guy, N, flashes through my mind like a blinding comet, and I collapse into Iris, cackling away.

Oh, gosh, they're _both _so weird. And they have green hair, so basically their match was made in heaven.

Imagine having a boy—whose weird-colored hair perfectly matched your own—spend _years _or whatever searching for you. I swallow, considering it. Sounds like a shady business.

Fillmy.

It hits me, cold in my chest.

She's alone with that guy right now.

Did I not just call her my best friend?

Shaking myself, I scoot a little back from Iris just as my phone begins buzzing away in my pocket. Hurriedly I pull it out, checking the text I'd received from none other than Fillmy's adoptive mother.

**How was your day? How's Filloma doing? Is she any better?**

I open and shut my mouth when I recognize the fact that I don't even know where she _is_.

Iris peeks around me, glancing into my phone, already the perfect nosy girlfriend, and I let out a long winded sigh. "I'm sorry Iris, but I think I need to go. My, um, my best friend and I were supposed to stick together, but it seems I've already broken that rule. She doesn't even have a way of contacting me, so she..." It dawns on me in dizzying suddenness. "So she could... kind of be anywhere by now..."

I-I mean, she has _legs_ after all...

Standing abruptly, tripping over Iris's blankets, I rush for the entrance of her cavern, sensing her footsteps pelting after me and choking up with the surge of gracious wonder that overcomes my cold, numb heart.

_Filloma_

N resides by my side, the elgyem in front of us, and the barrier sparkling in front of him. The barrier remains a dare, a jab at the Galactic dukes who stand in symmetrical robes and hooded faces. They clutch at air, most of them having given up the life of a pokemon trainer when their _beloved leader Ghetsis_ convinced them of the sins they had inflicted upon the world.

But I know not to waver.

I have seen the sorts of monstrous creations that have crawled out of Ghetsis's nasty, pasty outstretched hands. A lack of pokemon did not equate to a total safety.

Asha's outside. I can't hear her voice. My heart shudders. She's—She's hurt, she must be.

While the Dukedom considers their options, gazing past the barrier and into their prey's unfortunately trapped position, I sense our surroundings. The trees from outside tickle at the touch of my halfhearted prowess, twisting one way or another, not quite the direction I implore. The grass shudders, lengthening, shooting up by my command, but nowhere near long or fast enough to overcome the walls separating us from the outside.

The wood that makes up this house is dead, silent, devoid of life.

Furling my fists, I come to the conclusion that I am unable to make a difference.

The elgyem, then. Tentatively I pluck his poke ball from the ground and ask him, _What sort of powers do you have vested in you?_

He pauses. _Well, I can do this._ His multicolored fingers hover in front of him, and he summons a second barrier.

_Anything else?_

His green brow furrows. _What else would I need?_

Oh, great. The walls are closing in on us. My feet—They're threatening to collapse beneath me. I latch onto the bed tucked into the edge of the room and flump into it, throwing my head into my shaking, shivering hands.

We're surrounded and without a single useful option.

"Filloma."

N's voice pierces my sorrows, an acuate clarity.

"Filloma." He's in front of me, his hands over mine. "Filloma, let down your walls."

I throw my head up, my hair splintering out of my face. "What are you talking about?" I whisper, a hiss.

"These are my people," he whispers, his voice ever softer, ever lower, as if to complement my shriek. "We will be safe if we let down the elgyem's walls."

"N-N-No we won't," I tell him, yanking my hands away. "We need out of here. We need to escape." Maybe Asha's circled around the premises—maybe she's right behind us, scratching at one of the windows. Frantically I turn to look, but there's no black-furred form to greet and ease my weary eyes.

Swallowing, staring up at his vacant expression, I reiterate. "_We_ will not be safe if we go with _them_."

N gazes after me, his face a breathless vortex of unbelief. "Filloma, these are my dukes, my followers. There is no... _them_. Merely us."

"What are you _talking_ about," I wheeze, my body shuddering.

Of course. He's with them. He's always been with them. I was an idiot to think I could ward him away, somehow gain his confidence, learn of Plasma's plans, set them ablaze... somehow.

Pushing past him, I force myself off the bed and sidestep the body of the duke we had captured. Hurry, hurry, I command myself, to the back of the house, the window, where I find myself unable to break the glass and manage to implore a nearby tree to _fall_.

I don't know how I do it. It must be the fear, the rank scent of fear roiling off of me in undulating waves. Fear begets adrenaline, begets strength.

Glass shatters, cutting through my skin, tearing my face open into crisscrossed lines of burning, blistering red. I leap through the hole created by the tree and thank it hurriedly, as I gently push it back into place as it desires and fight out of the house—

Only to meet a wall of robed figures.

The tears puncture my eyes as the coldness consumes my heart.

I throw myself into their ranks, fighting for a slip between them, but soon hands are swallowing up my figure and taking me away, my wrestling not even denting their immaculate ranks. The trees I command do not fall, out of fear of hurting me, and the Dukes' feet suffocates the grass below us.

I let my head fall back and watch the world fly dizzyingly by.

I'm bleeding, staining my white dress with crimson teardrops.

Maybe I'll just die before they can take me.


	16. Phenomena

**Man this chapter was hard to write. Finally got through it!**

Chapter 16: Phenomena

The world swims before me, as if I am staring through a glass bubble. Excluded, I struggle to discern my surroundings, head swirling amongst a litter of unremarkable dreck.

Piercing clarity overcomes me, a sharp voice through the fogs in the form of the boy N.

"Filloma... why did you run?"

His visage, all angles and softened mint hair and pale skin, overtakes everything else. He's refreshing in the worst way possible. I can't feel my body, merely sense its weakened form half-against some sort of support, maybe even him. Yet he's everywhere, his wide blue eyes fighting to reflect back my bewildered state.

"Fillomaaa," he whispers, dragging the end of my name.

I'm grappling against this mindblowing headache, struggling to make sense of his melodious lilt between the gnarled mush of pain in my skull and the way the throbbing hiccups through my head. His hands are on me, cold and yet comforting, and yet—

Wincing, I pull against him, slapping away his fingers with slow, inaccurate hands that more touch and falter than tug.

He asks, ever softer, "What's wrong?"

My voice won't work. Then, sputtering, I manage to swallow and speak: "You."

The confusion leaks from his eyes and into his expression, palloring his cheeks. "M-Me? That cannot be right..." He's laughing, an awkward little fake laugh, a wow-what-a-terrible-joke laugh.

"You," I manage a second time, past the cottony tang of my mouth. "You... are wrong." And he's still staring at me with this dimwitted confusion lighting up his eyes, attempting to point itself back at me.

"How can I be wrong?" he's whispering, the confusion threatening to tear his face in two. Or maybe that's my face. The pain is blending it all together. "Filloma isn't even your real name. I'm saving us, saving our future."

And I'm going to kill myself if this headache doesn't abate. "_Shay_ isn't my real name either."

He sputters, a flash of alacrity lighting up his stupid pristine features. He's like some sort of tree nymph, which I recall with alarm is what my best friend first called me. "But it is. It's short for your real name, that is. Shaymin." He says it louder, harder, a smack to my already splintering head. "You were a shaymin until we made you human. Why wouldn't Shay be your real name?"

Until _we_ made you human...  
He was never really helping me, was he.

A part of me idles, pondering whether the headache will go away if I can get him to shut up. "Then I have no real name. Now leave me alone."

"N-No," he replies, suddenly growing a backbone. "We're supposed to be together, F-Filloma. That's our purpose. To rule the world—to make it a perfect harmony of—"

"I don't care." Finally he goes still.

I just want to be happy. I wish I could find the miserable creature that thought it would be funny to make it _so _hard to be happy, and just, and just... beg him to make things easier. Things, something, any number of things. Get down on my weak, jelly knees and implore that I be given some sort of kind speck in this hapless field of sorrows, something that gives me a reason to go on.

Tiredly my mind flickers over my best friend, my adoptive family, but simultaneously they are discarded. Not enough. It's never enough. When will it ever be enough.

But I don't know. I just don't know.

Perhaps with my attitude, it will never be enough.

At some point N fades from my periphery, and a frigid pinch of gratitude overcomes my otherwise endless numbness. From where I am, curled up against the metallic wall of a Galactic-owned building, I feel myself re-enter my body and come to terms with my own skin. Steadying, my head crashes against metal and sags gratefully into the cold crush of weight, comforting, holding me in place.

It matters not where I am, merely that N has released his hold upon my aching skull.

And to think I thought I could have him join us, join _me_...

Oh, it matters _not_.

Swallowing, I stay there, breathing slowly, deeply of the stale air.

Unfortunately I am not left alone for nearly as long as I would have liked. Footsteps pound the ground behind me, and I think about turning to greet my guest, but ultimately I do not feel like moving.

The voice follows, washing over me like an acid bath. "Shay."

"Oh, great," I mutter, the sting of his tone still burning, "N didn't tell you to call me by my name."

"Yes, actually, I was a little confused upon that matter. He insisted that you have no real name. His proposed solution was that we do not call you anything at all."

"Oh my goodness. Of course he said that." I choke on a bitter chuckle. "I no longer go by Shay."

"Would you face me when you tell me your 'real name' then?"

Stubbornly I sit there; then my curiosity overturns and I spare a glance over my pale shoulder. It is a man. His plastic-looking blonde hair has been combed over one side of his face, and an utterly indescribable strand of blue hair just about encircles his head. Unovan fashion. Marlun and I used to make fun of the magazines together.

My heart aches. Marlun. She said to stick together. I hope she isn't trapped here as well.

I swallow the sharp pang in my throat. "Your name is Colress."

"Ah. You remember me." For some reason his cheeks brighten. "I did not expect you to."

I shrug. "Hard to forget someone who ruined your life."

Then the glasses across his face—darken. His head bows stiffly. "Ruin it?"

"_No_, perfect it." I roll my eyes. "Yes, ruin it. You took me away from my home, my family, my safety." Maybe that's why I can't seem to contain myself, can't sustain my own paltry existence. I'm so far away from where I belong. Once belonged.

"We did however replace all of these attributes fully, with a new home, another family, a different flavor of safety."

"Ah, yes, safety." I expand my arms to point out at the metal walls surrounding us. "I feel so very safe within this death trap."

"Fantastic. Then that means I've done my job well." A shifty quirk in his mystifying yellow eyes. "Are there any comforts you are lacking?"

"My name," I reply, and his brows raise.

"Child, you neglected to tell me of it."

Cold invisible hands squeeze my sides together.

A piece of me doesn't want him to have it, to hold it in his stupid nerd brain. That's what he is—some sort of freakish scientist. His experiments warped my body and transformed me into this not-quite-correct existence.

Yet my heart stutters, and I stand slowly, my legs protesting as they stretch to support me. I face him, the scientist, and I whisper, "You're a nerd."

He coughs in some sort of awkward laugh. "I suppose that is one way of labeling it." But his eyes glint and he recognizes what I used to call him when I lived here. I must have picked up the word on television or some other strange place and plastered it onto him.

Now I stare into him and the memories come flooding through me, everything I had locked up deep inside and hoped to never let relinquish the light of remembering.

Yet I still needed those memories, and so we coexisted. Until now.

"How is the bird?" I ask him, and the realization dawns as if a sunrise in his gilded eyes.

"The bird is not present and will not be coming today," he replies smoothly.

The bird is Ghetsis.

We pretend that the bird is his pet pokemon, but Colress has no pokemon.

But if Ghetsis is not here...

I stumble forward, throwing myself into his labcoated chest and clutching his thin frame tightly.

He smells the same as he did when I was a child. The faint whiff of machinery and chemicals, yet the clove of a natural musk hidden far beneath it. It's almost a ghastly combination, yet somehow I find it tolerable.

More than tolerable. Comforting.

Into his shirt I mumble, "I wasn't supposed to return." My tears have soaked his shirt.

One of his long-fingered hands gingerly touches at my hair, then settles somewhere behind me, as if afraid to relax. "No," he replies softly, "you weren't."

"My name is Filloma," I finally tell him, "so don't you dare call me Shay again."

I sense him stiffen. "That is what the girl called you. Something to that effect?"

"The girl?" Why is she the one thing I can't seem to piece back together in my head...

"I never learned her name. The girl, the little brown one. The one who opened your cage and led you out the night I put Ghetsis to sleep and disabled my security measures."

Struggling to force it to fit, I ask, "Was her name Iris?"

No avail. Colress is silent. "I cannot tell you what I do not know, Filloma."

Filloma.

He doesn't hesitate. N hesitated.

Grateful tears drench his shirt. He doesn't push me aside but lets me stay, my heart thundering ceaselessly in my broken chest.

"There is still something I do not understand," I say, and he shifts, awaiting my question. "Why didn't you leave? I thought you were going to leave."

His hesitance greets me like a barbed wall, far too tall for me to ever hope to scale. His breaths tighten, and finally I recall that he is no father, merely a man plucked up by the Plasma Dukedom in search of a place that will utilize his compelling skill set.

He must see it in me, for he slowly says, "I was weak, Filloma." He moves back, allowing space to reclaim what we once shared. "I knew if I stayed, I would receive more work, more experiments, more possibilities. And I wanted to see how far I could stretch what matters I had only begun to discover."

When Colress's eyes flash back to me, I do not see the weathered pale yellow gaze rendered by years of unspeakable, unnatural deeds driven by an innate curiosity, but the one of years past. Brighter, the light of a sunrise.

He'd been making some routine check-up when his face came close to mine, and he had spoken low enough into my hair that the cameras could not pick it up. "Tonight is the night." There had been a flash of something low and grieving—something afraid to lose someone dear—in the shadows clinging to his face that day, but still he had said it and still he had stepped away, allowing the ties to sever.

Even now he tells me that I was not supposed to come back. He kicked away my footprints, all residue that may have allowed Ghetsis to find me, did all of this for me even as he stayed back here in this hellish pit and let the lustful greed of Ghetsis's mind control him.

I blink sharply, willing the cold pinpricks in my eyes to dissipate.

"Why didn't you want to leave?" I ask again, softer, weaker. "I met another scientist upon my escape who took me in. You could have furthered her research rather than..." than what? Continue to obliterate the natural order of the world?

Colress's head lowers, and he murmurs, "I told you. I was weak. I am weak. My heart is not anywhere near as pure as yours, my child." With a snap, his foot turns and he begins to recede to the edge of the metal chamber. "I'm sorry for what is about to happen, but I lack the resources to save you this time."

Then he hesitates.

Turns once. Looks at me, long, hard.

Mutters, "I still have a plan, however. But it's not a very good one." A bright expulsion of concern brims and then abruptly dies in his emotionless face. "So be careful."

He exits through a sliding door in the far wall. I do not follow, nor do I attempt to escape.

Pouting, I sit myself back into the corner of the chamber, staring back at where Colress had disappeared to. Weak, he calls himself.

But as the metal wall peels away in front of me, revealing a glass see-through holding area stuffed full of people in robes, I begin to wonder what he truly means by _weak_.

Be careful, he said. Of what?

One robed figure steps ahead, their face obscured as always by the hood.

I call out, the smirk carving up my mouth, "Too afraid to show your face to me?"

"Yes," they reply in a low, sorrowful tone. I'm so taken aback that I lose all fire to shoot another reply. "Yes, I am afraid. But our lord commands it, and so I must."

Their hands snap back to their sides, and the tiniest opening appears between the glass wall and me. Then for a moment I catch angular skin and sunken cheeks as a burst of flame erupts between the believer's lips, sailing straight for me.

I gasp and duck to the ground. The fire crashes somewhere above my head, singeing the metal.

Singeing the metal—

This holding chamber wasn't prepared for a person who... who could use _fire_.

He said he still has a plan—a poorly-made plan.

Gasping, I jump up as another shot of flame curls toward me, blackening the floor beneath my feet. I cry out and hop away, my bare feet forming the starts of blisters. My heart squeezes into my chest as if seeking a way of escape, and I land clumsily, tripping over my own burning toes. Reaching out my hands, I struggle to grasp, to feel, to find some connection to the outside world. The metal has begun to smolder, and I catch the slightest specks of green outside. If I could only—

With my head turned away from the enemy, I receive a fireball to the back and fall _smack_ to the ground.

Then the fire whiffs through my hair, licking my skin and I realize—_I am literally aflame._

The clinging fogs of my past memories burn away, and I'm left curled up on the floor in a midst of unspeakable torture. My skin is being eaten alive, my very clothes to blackened crisps along my back, my poor hair acting as transport while the flames tease at my neck, tasting for my face, my eyes, my—

Screaming, I pound a singed fist into the metal.

I don't see it, just sense the sudden flourish of wind and the guttural lurch of steel wall breaking away. Glancing once above me, I catch the trunk of a wayward tree hovering above my head. When I reach out to it with a cracked finger, the rush of calm overcomes me as if a balm, and the leaves of the branches settle about me, set to work on its rejuvenating properties.

Gasping into my palm, I sense the restorative process and only look once at the glass, daring the creatures draped in robes to try again.

They've developed new forms of experiment, I see. No longer probing with chemicals and fingers, now utilizing their own inhuman methods against me.

Colress's experiments—

Before my eyes, the one in reddish robes abates, and one in blue takes their spot. The hands raise, and a crushing tidal wave rips the walls to shreds. Metal goes flying as a gray-robed figure punches a fist and the shrapnel explodes into tiny needle-like shreds. Struggling to keep air in my lungs, I grasp at the tree's sturdy trunk and crawl on top of it, securing myself under a protective layer of leaves. My breaths, so fast and needy, shove against the tree, pressing my stomach into its grainy surface.

My frantic toes scrabble for purchase as I scoot backwards. My clothes have become a desolate, blackened mess. But there's no time to cry over it, and so I tumble up the trunk and make my way through the torrent, aiming for the puncture of light that now flickers fitfully overhead through the tree's own gaping entrance-hole.

Just as my fingers stretch for the opening, a wayward metal strip smacks my hand, knocking me aside and leaving me bereft for the monsoon to steal me away. I'm tossed into the torrent, unable to control my own motor functions. Hurriedly I throw my own hands into the air, reaching, reaching—grasping hold of a sudden vine that leaps out of the nature surrounding my metal prison. It wraps about my wrists and ties me onto the tree. Now I can't fall off so easily.

As if responding to my thoughts, even the ones I kept to myself, a collection of vines and leaves and little pink flowers fold about my body, crafting a tightly-knit dress of fascinating greenery. Releasing a wet, jagged breath, I sag for a moment into the tree, knowing all too much that this flash of weakness could send me spiraling into a whole new well of oblivion.

Carefully I inch my forlorn way across the tree again, vines tugging me closer to sunlight. More and more shoot into the opening like spiderwebs and blanket my sides, protecting me from the spatter and spray of water meshed in metal.

Behind me, I sense the monsoon drying. Swallowing, I manage a look backwards and watch as the one in black robes claps their hands and the room goes into shadow.

Idiot. The light from the outside still bathes my face in a gentle, hopeful glow. My shuddering body forces me inch by inch closer, and I can only hope that before they get the idea, I'll be gone.

Then my mind utterly shuts down.

An indescribable headache attacks me from the inside out, and I scrabble with my head, moaning inconsolably. H-How can I break something so psychological? Psy—Psychic.

The dread is consuming me whole and I've ceased moving. Sharp pinpricks of angry tears form in the edges of my eyes. I'm so close. I'm so close, and yet I've no clue how to—

Somehow it occurs to me. With one shuddering hand, I point back, and the vines quadruple, splintering through the shadows to intercept with the robed figures. I don't care how they are harmed so long as this cloudy, unruly fog of a nightmare dissipates.

While I'm left muttering to myself, unable to tell if the vines were in my head or hurtling toward my captors, a hand—no, a paw—grapples for my own.

I look up, the tears splintering down my face, and a snout meets mine.

Ashy gray—the eyes a luminous quartz.

_Asha_, I whisper, and the zoroark pulls me into her strong grip, tossing the both of us out of the hole in the wall.

We fall to the ground in a tumble, but she breaks our fall with the fat pouf of reddish hair that now lies below her waist. She's become two-legged in the duration of her evolution, and while I try to come to terms with it, she helps me to my feet.

Head bowed, she murmurs, _I'm so sorry, Filloma._

I stare at her for a long time, unable to form words. The clothes I once wore, now tattered and burnt, have been replaced with this patchwork dress of greenery. My hair, somehow, has grown back as if a plant of its own. The burns along my skin have healed remarkably, but the memory is enough to cause me to cringe.

Either we're out of their range, or the psychic user has given up, as I am freed of the impenetrable headache.

_Asha... why did N..?_

She blinks imperiously. _I don't know. I'm mad about it though. I'd love to go over to him and force-feed him a piece of my mind, but I don't want to drag you anywhere near them._ Her shoulders stiffen, and she adds, quieter, _If he's not going to protect you, then I will._

_A-Asha?_ Oh dear. I'm blushing.

Her eyes meet mine and hold them. _He's not listening to you. Your friend went missing with that girl who has the weird scent. They're... I don't think they're trying to kill you, but whatever the heck that was sure makes it look like they are._

Her paws take my hands, and she bows her head to me. She's gotten taller, a head above me now. _But that's not right. I always thought N was trying to be right, but when he let you both get captured... it just... it really freaked me out. Really made me think, maybe he's not as far along as I thought he was. Maybe you and him were both trying to juke each other._

_I can't support the Dukedom. They kidnapped and tortured a lucario N befriended a long time ago, a lucario that helped raise me. As long as they continue to uphold and recreate tragedies such as those, I refuse to join them._

Her smile has become incisive. _So what next, Filloma? What's the plan?_

And I realize that it's up to us. Nobody else is going to stop them. Nobody else knows to stop them.

It's up to us.

My stomach freezes, and I can't tell if it's adrenaline or dread that now pumps my heart faster.


	17. Our Worlds Crumbling

**Alright... now after that last crazy chapter, might as well make another crazy chapter.**

**It may seem like I do not have a plan, but I promise I do xD well, some of the time. The plan is to start a plan and then leave it open and wait for the actual writing process to come in and somehow make things even crazier.**

**Anyways, if you're still reading this story, haha hello! The updates keep being... quite sporadic. But hello I'm back for right now! The other story I was working on made me mad and depressed because I was suffering trying to write it, so back to fun time fanfiction.**

Chapter 17: Our Worlds Crumbling

_N_

There is a tower of the highest length within Plasmic Palace. This tower is my residence, my private chambers. From here I can see the rolling fields and lush canopy of treetops that surround the palace and, as Father told me, hide it from the cruel public view. He has warned me time and time again that passerby must never learn of us and our visionary dreams, not until the moment of retribution. I wonder what would be so strange if someone such as the girl Marlun discovered our hidden abode.

My attention is soon diverted by the fracturing of an entire palace wall. Powdery smoke releases from a gash, spiraling upwards like wayward snow. The only sectioned-away room of Plasmic Palace, the metal holding chamber whose purposes Father has yet to spell out for me, kept a safe distance away from the rest of the buildings.

A chunk of wall has broken off, as if—smoldered. I squint at the wreckage, but I cannot make out any other discerning qualities.

Until the tree to its back bends at an unnatural angle and sidles through the hole.

There is only one person I know who could have done such a thing.

I leap off of my bed and launch through the door, tumbling downstairs until I nigh trip and catch myself, my breaths tight. On my way down the hallway, rushing toward the exit doors, my shoulder clips on another person's arm, and I stumble.

Oval glasses with metallic rims flash above me. I meet eyes with Colress, our scientist of the highest order. For once his gilded eyes have unsettled, as if stirred. Colress, a man of science, a man of logical structure, shaken?

His brow furrows into my direction, and before I can leave he sharply asks, "What are you doing now, child?"

I freeze. I haven't been called a child in some time.

My eyes give me away, unable to leave the tree alone. "She's in there? Why is she in there?"

"Well she's too big for her cage, now isn't she." Colress's chuckle is rusted, sardonic. "Why did you think your father had that testing facility made?"

"I don't know," I murmur, all-too aware of my ignorance. Isn't that what she said to me? I was ignorant?

...is that why I am her problem?

But doesn't she know why we're here?

Colress scoffs, already on his way to some other experiment of his. "You are a fool. It is a good thing I thought ahead." He mutters something like "useless" under his breath, but he's already too far away, his labcoat flapping in the breeze of his breakneck gait.

That's all he's going to tell me, apparently, as he rounds a corner and has disappeared as if a haunted ghost, leaving me to stand dumbly on my lonesome.

I shake myself and move on. There is no time to play mind games with the smartest man of Plasmic Palace. I have a duty I must fulfill.

The palace rounds about in such a way as to lead from rather than to the _testing facility_, of intents I cannot imagine. I determine the palace desires to lead me on a route much longer than what I would like to take, and so I prop open one of the few windows in the hallway and sidle through it. Unceremoniously I crash into the ground and pick myself back up, racing ahead to the building with the tree poking out of it.

There. A figure clambering up the tree, into the facility—

Wait, that's not her at all. That's a pokemon. A two-legged kitsune with long, red hair and ashen fur, and the glittering quartz eyes that I could not mistake for the world.

Asha, I almost call out, but then I find myself hesitating. The words stick to my throat.

I slide to the ground, my back against the testing facility. Black scorch marks have torn its exterior, breaking into holes like the one that tree had twisted inside of—the tree that my now-zoroark friend had climbed atop and now snuck within. My first question is of course how she even found us here, though she does know the location of the palace. It hides within the very center of Unova—my father would call it "Unova's heart," to be revealed to the people once the public knows of us and rejoices in our actions for their greater good.

No, my question is how she trekked this entire way here. We must have not been as far away as I had thought. That or... it does appear something occurred to her, something memorable enough to cause her evolution.

She has been my only friend for some time now. Any other pokemon I knew, I had lost connection with or they had chosen to step outside the periphery of my life. Just myself and Asha, preparing for the coming day of our retribution.

And Father, of course, though he is no pokemon friend. The thought of him causes me to glance back at the window I had unprofessionally squeezed through, thinking myself some sort of thief, fiend. None of the sort, obviously—Father has eyes all over Plasmic Palace. He knows all. I am not sure how, but I have come to trust in his ceaseless flow of knowledge.

He is the one who told me we must find her. That I need her, if I am to be the ruling force of the Dukedom. He told me, and so it must be true.

I have been staring so hard at the tree that I almost mistake the moving shadows as another facet of its rough exterior. But no, they shudder and move, Asha the zoroark and a pale form tucked against her.

There she is.

I still don't know what to call her. She said she has no true name, and so now I am sort of at a loss for words.

Perhaps I shall ask her, once she and Asha land.

Their movements arc across the sky, and before I can say anything, they land in a copse farther away than I was anticipating. I have to pick myself up and run into their direction. By the time I reach them, I am out of breath. Father did not instruct me in the ways of training my body.

For a long time I had not questioned his motives, but I hear her voice in a sharp pang of alacrity: _Why would he keep you soft, N? Why would he want you to stay weak?_

It occurs to me again that she is making sides, forcing a war out of a family, and that if I do not side with her I will become her enemy.

That there might be a reason why I would become an enemy. A reason that links with the reason Father kept me soft, did not let me out at night after he saw me play-fighting with the pokemon friends I had discovered.

The reason why Mother was no longer allowed to see me.

My stomach clenches. He told me Mother had gone home, had left the palace, but Asha did not believe him, and I am beginning to wonder why. Instinctively I clutch my only gift from Mother, the glowing bracelet about my wrist, and I try to remind myself what she would do in such a situation as this one.

Then I stride into the trees and call out. "Asha?"

Some sort of commotion ensues from the greenish shadows. Zoroark paws clap around my wrists, and a zoroark rump slams me into the ground, holding me in place.

Her voice, a raspy yip, brushes over my skin. _What do you want?_

No, I do not think Mother would have aroused such suspicion. It appears I have failed her yet again.

I still see her in my periphery; it's easy to imagine her beguiling amber eyes and gentle warmth while I'm held hostage in a dark forest... not much else to think about. Perhaps Mother is not the right word for her—she was a lucario after all—but that is what I called her when she was not around. She had no name that I know of, but she responded when I called for her, as if somehow she knew what I needed before even I did.

She taught me how to speak with pokemon such as herself, and where I failed, she helped me with her gift of aura.

I wonder how I may have changed, if she had not gone missing from my life.

If only she was here now.

_Hello, Asha,_ I manage. _It is me._

_Yeah, yeah, sure._ Her voice has become a growl. _And here's me playing the world's tiniest violin. I asked, what do you want? Do you wanna sabotage Filloma... again? Like didn't you do that enough times for a freaking lifetime? Let the girl live, you idiot!_

She is here then, somewhere in the shadows. Listening.

_I've never tried to... to sabotage her._

_That's because your listening skills are very bad! And you have been sabotaging her this whole stupid time! Rrrgghhh—_Asha notably moves her paws as to not crush me with her claws. They must have been unintentionally unsheathed as she seethed in her anger. _Now we're stuck here with very few good ideas, while you're over here probably about to add another idiotic mission to your list of idiotic missions!_

Asha's never spoken so roughly to me before. I struggle to determine why she is now.

_Idiotic_, I finally manage, and she freezes her paw before it lashes against my face.

When my body stills, I sense her hot breath pillowing my face, her muscles tensing, her gaze closing in on me, sizing up my limp form, waiting—waiting to carefully construe my next action. She is stronger than I could ever hope to be, stronger and more capable than Father let me ever try to be. And it's so blindingly obvious now that she's evolved, now that it's become abundantly true that I will not undergo such a transformation.

If _Filloma_ is forcing my family to choose sides... it appears Asha has chosen her. My only friend, my oldest companion. She has decided against me.

My stomach, it feels... sick.

My own best friend. What have I done so horribly wrong..?

Her paws returns to my shoulders, pinning me down the moment I struggle around her weight. She's watching my eyes splinter about the treetops, seeking between leaves for a pale face that lives on in my memories and chases me through my dreams. But I do not see her.

_She doesn't trust you._ Asha senses my sharp exhale. _Do you blame her?_

_I would like to_, is my eventual response, _but it appears I am unable to. _There's a foreign, feral aching in my throat, mangling my thoughts with the distant throbbing of my skull. _Where is she?_

I sense my strain release the moment I lay eyes upon her. And she knows it too; her shoulders bunch closer to the rest of her lithe, milky figure, and a mess of matted minty hair falls about her face, as if in the attempt of obscuring herself from me.

She's in a tree. I was right. There she is, her legs up against her chest, but now that she recognizes me, the legs fall and swing, and the bough jiggles with the motion of her weight. Though she tries to hide it, the tiniest spark ignites in her gaze, as her feet sway and her dress of veins stretches to cover her modestly. Always modest, uptight, careful, but even now her guarded expression falters when she cannot look away as quickly as she must have wanted to.

Asha lets out a breath. _Did you let him see you?_

_He would have seen me eventually,_ murmurs Filloma, her fingers drawn tented over her lips. She skids down the edge of the tree's branch, and it lowers with her, bouncing back into place the moment her feet touch ground. No more shoes. Where did her shoes go?

Before I can ask, she responds. _Your kind took them. They ruined my clothes, ruined my skin, threatened to wrench me open and ogle all the organs inside of me. _

I exhale slowly. Asha weakens her grip, her head faltering between the both of us. _My people would never. We adore you._

"And what if they did?" Her voice launches across the forest to me, a laced dagger.

It strikes me and I fumble with her outcry. "We would... we would have a wonderful reason. A reason that would make perfect sense, if only you gave Father the chance to—"

"Cover his ass."

My mouth folds shut. It appears I will not be allowed to finish my sentences today.

Asha lets out an involuntary snicker and slaps a paw over her muzzle.

"If I gave him the chance to cover his fat, lying ass, I would be gifted a wonderful little reason that would tie together the nasty box he has thrown me into once again." She folds her slim arms across her chest. There is pride in her face, awash despite the blunt look in her eye, the gaunt cut at her cheek, the blemishes dragging shadows like bruises through her skin. "He would tell me, _Dear Shay, I am helping you—helping _us—_change the world for the better._

"Stop telling me that. I ceased in believing it long ago."

At some point she had moved closer to me, and now her hair falls over her head, blanketing our faces like a curtain. She speaks over me, her breaths launching into my face, her face inches away, radiating with a heated vengeance.

"N, how? How can you _believe_ in them still?"

"Filloma," I whisper, and she shudders, the hesitation in her form weakening her fury. "You do not see what I see when I look upon my father, my dukedom."

She swallows hard, her cheeks aflame. "What am I—What am I _missing_ that you're so sure exists?" She angrily draws her hair behind her ear. "What am I supposed to see? All I uncover is misuse and torture and horrible, horrible, horrible.." Her lips gloss over the word, atrocities, but she cannot light a voice to it, and so it falls dead to sound.

Yet I still hear it.

Finally I ask, "What did they do to you that they did not show me?"

Her brows slowly raise. This is the first time I have separated the dukedom from myself, and with the distinction in place my lips have gone cold.

"I told you." Her voice sends a low aching in my soul, somewhere intangible yet all-powerful. It dives deep into me like a secret, its little fingers ripping into me and revealing my very core. "I told you what they did to me. They malformed my very _appearance_, N. I was a pokemon, and now I... and now I..."

"And now..."

Her nose grazes mine. I don't think she meant to—it's the way her head bobbles, as if losing its connection to her neck—but she can't seem to pull herself away. "And now I'm never going to find a home ever again. I can't even convince the boy I supposedly grew up with to help me. He's too—He'd rather... He..."

I realize it's not raining the moment I catch glimpse of her mottled, graying eyes.

"Filloma," I manage, and she sobs. "Filloma, there is something I must tell you."

Asha climbs off of me as I turn and face Filloma. She's shaking, head hidden by her trembling hands. Gently I rest my hands at her shoulders, and she lets me, bends into my warmth. "Filloma." She freezes. "Please open your eyes."

"I don't want to," she mumbles, but for some indiscernible reason she does it anyways, even as the tears fall and she may not even be able to make me out. I remove a hand—my left hand—from her, and I tug the aura bracelet from its nook in my sleeve. Her eyes dazzle with its light, and the storm momentarily calms, a hazy blue.

"My mother gave this to me long ago. I—I called her mother, but she was not a human." Filloma gasps. "She was a lucario. She created this for me when she taught me how to speak to other pokemon. She told me if they see it, they will feel more at ease.

"It may appear decorative, but it is a special bracelet. The color it glows gives away my inner feelings; it is only blue when I tell the truth." I swallow, forcing the sudden tightness down as it rushes to stop my speaking.

Mother's face swims before me, still gentle, placid, her comforting murmur cushioning my ears. I do not know where she is now, whether Father has hidden her away somewhere or if she has left him, but the tugging at my gut ventures me to ask now the questions I had never considered asking him—asking _them_.

"Filloma... I do not love you."

The bracelet burns. She flinches back at the burst of scarlet, shading her eyes with a hand.

She tries to look back at me, but she knows what my intents have laid out to her.

"I... N, that's... I did not realize you..." The smoldering has cleared; only a pink afterburn remains at her cheeks. "Um, I'm sorry, I don't know what to..."

"No, I didn't expect you to say anything at all." I quash the cheeky grin striving up my lip. "I know you do not see me in a romantic light. I'm not trying to say that I desire you in a... romantic light."

Then while I have her attention, I ask, "You like Keebae, don't you?" and the way it opens up her face—I can't help myself. I look away. I laugh.

She can't even form a response.

"I—I—Uhhh... Wh-Who's Keebae?"

"Goodness gracious, Filloma. I am not a fool. I know as well as you do how you felt about her even when we were little."

"Then... Keebae's..." There it is, the speck of sun in her gaze. She releases a long, shuddery breath. "Keebae's the girl who saved me."

"So it was she who..." A knot tightens in my throat. "No wonder Father banished her. I had been wondering why for all this time when the answer lay plain in front of me."

"B-Banished..!"

Oh, she's trembling again. It's a good thing I am not physically attracted to her or my life would be infinitely more difficult, not even minding the fact that she would never be attracted to me. There goes Asha's barking laugh again—somehow a piece of me eases at the sound of her hearing my thoughts and enjoying my self-destruction.

I take Filloma's hands into my own. She squeezes tight to me. "Yes, banished. I believe he sent her to a region far away from this one. Father told me that she would serve his pen pal."

"Pen pal..?" Filloma's lips purse. "N, I am sorry. But I'm afraid you've gone and lost me. Gh-Ghetsis... has a _pen pal_?"

"Do you not remember Cyrus? He was some few years older than us." She's shaking her head. "No? Oh—It's because you were..." My gut pinches. "You were still a pokemon when Father took me to meet him. Colress had been tasked with searching you out while Father spoke with Cyrus and introduced me to him. He stayed with us for some time, but perhaps this was during your, ah, transformation.

"He learned a great deal from Father and went on to his own home. He said he had some unfinished business. I am not sure what he meant by that."

Filloma's brow furrows. "What did he learn from... Father?"

I struggle to look back upon it. "I was there for a number of their sessions. They spoke a great deal about mythical pokemon such as the family you are from, as well as a few rumored others who supposedly control the very axis of our world. Father has always been interested in harnessing that power and breaking humanity's chains to these overlords. He has wondered for so long if people and pokemon would be happier without them."

She's losing me again. Her eyes have smoldered. "So... So you're saying that Ghetsis had another 'child' something like us, and that that 'child' has fully grown and is off in another region doing who even knows what?

She stumbles. "And Keebae was with him last..." The storm is brewing, and lightning flashes through her gaze.

I tighten my grip on her.

She refocuses to me.

My heart—it's pounding. Has she ever paid attention to me without my inquiry?

"But can you not see, Filloma? The reason Father wishes to find you is to bolster the hearts of people, to convince them that humans and pokemon do not need to chain themselves to one another. He wishes to break the bond of pokemon as slaves to human—but that is not at all where his dreams end. He gazes above us and sees the creatures that bond humans as slaves to them... and he desires to end their control. The challenges he places upon you, the showing you to people—he wishes to make you strong enough to be able to take on our overlords. The Plasma Dukedom plans to come out of the shadows and save all of humanity as well as each and every pokemon's soul.

"How," I utter, my voice a feathery whisper, "_how_ could that be seen as atrocious?"

Her face—it freezes.

Her eyes dart once to my bracelet. They squeeze shut at the sight of cerulean.

"This is too much," she manages, sagging into me. "Please tell me this is all a terrible dream."

"No," I murmur, folding her into my arms. Her fingers tighten at my chest, struggling for purchase. "It is not a dream. He is beginning with the extinction of the dragon rulers Reshiram and Zekrom. Once he deems you powerful enough—now that you have returned and there is no need for the sages to step in—they will be next."

"I... N, I... I-I-I don't know if I completely understand..."

"That's okay." The frigid touch to her skin is melting. "I... I am beginning to understand how you could have seen Father's uses as lethal, harmful, and I cannot bring myself to wish you to go back to him. If... you are interested... we could seek out the dragons for ourselves."

There—Her breaths hitch. "How did you know that's what I was thinking?"

"I'm getting better at reading you."

She giggles. "Is that triumph in your tone?"

"P-Perhaps."

Goodness, I've had a lot of trouble with this. Even before we were reunited, I couldn't begin to comprehend why she would leave Father and his dream of true unity.

It's so simple, so easy, so—right in front of me. Of course she was afraid. Father didn't tell her anything.

Or perhaps there's another reason she hesitates, something that neither of us can even begin to understand.

**Bro this got so meta. I did not see this coming and YET here we are. **

**Bro...**


	18. Lost in the Skies

**I swear can I make this story any weirder? oh my gosh. I guess we'll find out soon.**

**Oh by the way what happened to Marlun and her new girlfriend haha that's probably a question I need to answer in the near future**

**(To those of you asking, why is Ghetsis suddenly being given dimension that makes him look less like a psycho villain with very little development? Because I was like but what if Ghetsis was more 3-dimensional... what would he look like... what kind of thing would he turn into...  
To be fair, we all saw Cyrus. So that's kind of what makes you go, N is saying Ghetsis has all these beautiful, pure dreams, but if so, why does Asha feel like N's "Mother" (yes this is Lucaro's mom! Oh my gash!) has not simply left the Palace? Why did Ghetsis make Filloma feel so ostracized if he's actually this morally upright person apparently? WELL LET'S FIND OUT) **

Chapter 18: Lost in the Skies

_Marlun_

After a long, fruitless search where we ran around Bermuda Village and found actually zero clues, Iris and I met back up at her parents' cave. I was about to find myself a nice little walking stick and traverse the very edges of this stupid region in order to unearth my best friend, but then my dragon-raised girlfriend stopped me. She stepped into her home and came out with a fat hairband. I had no idea, of course, how a hairband was going to save poor sickly weak moody pale Filmy, Filmy who can't even make herself a bowl of cereal without thinking the _Plasmic Dukedom_ are gonna steal her spoon while she's got her back turned.

I must say, I know extremely little about these Dukedom weirdos, but if she's wracked up that much PTSD due to their interference, well I can't really say any good things, like at all, of them.

Then of course there's the fact that N failed to protect her and now they're both just flat out missing. Scamp was mewling in my bag at this point, but _of course_ I don't know pokemon, so I had no idea what my stupid little skitty was saying. I liked to think he was missing Filmy, but he could've just been tired of sitting in a backpack all day.

While I was struggling to come up with a single solution to Filmy's disappearance, Iris casually pulled up her massive pouf of hair. Then before my eyes I watched as she tugged it together like a massive curtain and carefully, steadily braided it down to a rope that glided past her back.

This would have been surprising on its own. Her hair did not look nearly as malleable as it turned out to be.

But this was by far completely insignificant when compared to what her hair had been used to hide.

My mouth fell straight open. You could've fit a whole lot of food into it. "Iris, pray tell, are those wings for real?"

Her brows quirked, and with a giggle, she replied, "No, not really. If they were for show, I wouldn't be hiding them from everyone all the time, now would I?"

Okay so my cool girlfriend who was raised by dragons had literal wings spouting out of her shoulder blades.

_Clearly_ Filmy has no taste in girls if she thought this one wasn't gonna be The One.

"Dude... how did you _get _those?"

Iris shrugged. "Very long story. Now let's get ourselves a vantage point."

It's been an arduous few days of searching through the air, landing on the ground when Iris tires (which is unfortunately much more often than we'd like), searching again, and then lukewarm puddles of dreamless sleep. The first time we got this whole plan concocted, Iris put her cute little nervous hands around me, then _WHOOMP_ we were thrown up above. Her wings held us aloft, and where her anxious fingers wavered, I clung tight to my adorable girlfriend's superpower.

Man if only Filmy was this eager to embrace her own weird power. I mean she can basically talk to plants. _And _pokemon. All I can talk to are stupid humans. Really unfair.

With our heads in two separate directions, we gained a perfect full-circle vantage. But it's really too bad we couldn't find anything to show for it. I mean, _perfect full-circle vantage_. And yet nothing. No Filmy. No weirdo N. No oddly-shaped plants that might lead us to my best friend's location.

It's not like we've hovered in one single area either. Iris took us slowly in a circle around the outer copse of Unova, on the typical league trail a trainer takes while working it up to becoming a worthy challenger. No Filmy—Though to be fair, she didn't have any pokemon, so it's not like she'd be all that into the pokemon trainer thing.

Oh gosh I really screwed this up. Professor Juniper kept calling, and every time my phone buzzed I acted like I couldn't get to it in time. Then one time while up in the sky my phone freaked out and then _I _freaked out and then—well—my phone skidded out of my pocket. And landed in the lake we were flying over. And now I guess I have one less problem. Or maybe it's one more.

We've camped out in forests and caverns, whatever suspicious places we can't fly over.

Now the days are blurring together and I'm losing my freaking mind. My best friend is radio silence and I'm the one who dipped on her to go ask out some girl. Some, okay, _incredible_ dragon girl with dragon parents and also inexplicable dragon wings.

But the moment I turned around, she was gone. Yes, she's annoying. Yes, she grinds my freaking gears. But she's still my frustratingly wonderful best friend.

"Maybe it's her moral compass," I mutter into my knees after we've made our camp and the hush of night has fallen. A fire flickers by us. Iris must've made it while I spaced out in a bleary daze. "Maybe she saw something really bad, and so she went to investigate—because she's that stick-up-her-butt type—and... trouble befell her. And N's not all that strong-looking, so then they... then they..." Kidnapped? Were they kidnapped?

I groan into myself. Never gonna know.

Our encampment tonight's in this cute little shaded spot where two hills intertwine. I did, in fact, take this to be A Sign, but so far if it is one, I've got no reassurance for it. But the hills are soft and we've spread Filloma's pink blanket across the ground, and she would be utterly pissed if she knew (which is why she'll never know and I'll have to painstakingly pluck all the stickerburrs out of it whenever we finally locate her). This is the meaning of true friendship.

The fire is a small distance from the blanket, as a safety measure, but its heat still radiates against me. Iris is the one who rubs some sticks together to make it happen, but I keep peeking over my knees and wondering if she's actually gonna use literal dragon breath to make it spark one of these nights.

My girlfriend sidles against me once she's done with preparations. I gaze up to the heavens and murmur, "The stars are beautiful tonight." Twinkling little reminders that there's still something bright out there.

"Yeah. They are." Iris's honeyed-brown eyes sparkle with their luminosity.

I lean up close to her and whisper, "There's something even more beautiful right here, though."

"There is?" she squeaks, and her leathery dark dragon wings flutter with surprise. Is she allowed to be this cute? "It's... It's the... uhhm... the field?"

"No, you goon." I poke her cheek. "You."

She gasps. "Oh!"

"I can't believe you didn't see that coming."

Shaking her head, she lets out a breath as her hair falls over her face. "I really didn't though. B-But, um, thank you."

We've packed all the essentials—she's in a zip-up pair of footie pajamas that are designed after this monster pokemon garchomp with navy blue skin and a mean, shark-like snout. She's expertly cut holes into the back to allow breathing space for her wings. Now that I think about it, she must have to specially tailor every single garment she wears to make sure her wings don't get all bungled up in it. I wonder how much pain she'd feel if she failed such a measure.

Golly, what a weird thing to be curious about. I let my hands fall into my lap and stare out over the expanse before us. "Still no Filmy today. You sure you wanna keep helping me search?"

Iris nods, her braid bobbing. "Yeah. If I stop helping you, I don't know if you'll remember to eat, or at least drink." I flush and look away. It's true that she keeps having to remind me before I pass out and possibly freaking die on this stupid search.

"I'm just worried about her," I mutter. "She's not the type of person to disappear. I mean, yes, she'll go hide someplace when she gets sick of you, because of course I chose the most difficult person in the world to be my childhood friend, but... she wouldn't leave for no reason. She'd... She'd tell me." I hate it, I hate it the moment my speech hiccups and I hesitate, and that question, _would she?_, falters through my mindscape like a stray gunshot.

And then it's all I'm thinking about. My skin's gone numb, my head crunching under the frigid clutch of a brain freeze.

I swallow the trepidation, try to laugh it off. "Man, wouldn't that be funny if she was just hiding from me this whole time, and that was the reason we couldn't find her."

"That would hurt." Iris looks away, into the distance.

I try to follow her line of sight; she's watching the land that we haven't seen yet, but there's this point, far off, nestled in the peaks of clouds, where she's looking so fiercely that I can't quite mistake it for the sleepy village below it, or the cliffs that lead up to it.

"What's that?" I whisper. She jolts so hard she rolls onto her back, her wings fanning out beside her.

"Oh, it's just... a special dragon place."

I lay down next to her. "Okay, tell me about this special dragon place." This could get a lot more intimate if she knew what she was saying, but something tells me she won't take it. What can a girl do.

Iris's brow furrows. "It's a big, like, super big tower. It's so big that we can hardly even see it from here, because it's trying to reach the heavens. Apparently it's where people of old met with the gods of our realm, and they were said to be all-powerful dragon pokemon. Reshiram, The White Queen of Flame, and Zekrom, The Black King of Lightning."

"Dang... Why haven't I heard any of this before now? Sounds pretty cool."

She gazes into that penetrating heavenward point like she can't bear to let it go unseen once more. "My parents told me the stories have been lost to most humans. They stopped caring, or they forgot the means of hearing them." Her hand reaches out, as if on its own, struggling to grasp the tower of our gods. "I've wanted to, ever since I learned the stories, try to speak with them. I want to know why I have lived this life full of suffering. I want... I want to know if there's a purpose, or if I was a mere unlucky girl."

I shut my mouth before I can say something thoughtless, something inconsiderate. These... These pinching sensations sort of wash up within me, and my throat burns, and my stomach whirls about in a hurricane of—I can't even describe it.

I can't even begin to imagine what Iris could be talking about. It must be related to why she has her dragon wings, maybe why she was raised by dragons too.

"D'you think the gods would know where Filloma went?" The moment I say it, my voice has gone soft, and it rolls over the gentle fields.

There's a fumbling shudder in Iris's face, something that starts with a shadow and disappears suddenly as she turns to face me. "I don't know. Better than we do, probably."

"Then maybe... maybe we should try to commune with them." I continue before I can stop myself—"And then you can ask them why you've suffered."

Her eyes widen. "I suppose I could."

"Just think about it." I close my eyes as I lean into the blanket. The rocks beneath it jut into me. This isn't a great blanket for travel, but it's all we have.

This could be a huge detour I just proposed, but it's all we know.

Iris's voice lumbers over me. "I'll, um, take the first watch." She breaks for an out-of-place chuckle. "I like this one, by the way." Her finger touches around my tummy, indicating my shirt.

This one's orange. It reads "I will raise you/Like a phoenix!" and has the legendary bird ho-oh on it. He's got on a bright blue collar and leash.

"Yeah, my parents travel a lot, so they bought me one of these things while on a business trip to Johto. I have an entire empire of terrible pokemon tees that look just a teensy bit off-brand."

Iris's giggle. "That's amazing."

"Sure feels that way when it's you saying it."

Then I promptly turn over and fall asleep. It's too bad, really. I'd almost gotten her to flirt.

_Filloma_

"There's still something I need to do before we leave."

Asha and N had stared at me as if I really did transform back into a shaymin.

_Why?_ The zoroark sputters. _Why would you want to dally?_

I shake my head. "I need to speak with Colress one last time." My gut wavers, heaving, and again I experience this sensation of—electric arcing up my veins. "I don't think I will gain another chance like this again."

N stands up with me. He towers over me, like a shadow, or maybe more like an idiotic brother. An idiotic brother who is sometimes, rarely, helpful... "I can lead you to him. I know where his laboratory is. I saw him on my way here, so he must have gone in that direction."

"Wonderful. Let's go now and get this over with." Oh, if only I had my cardigan. I'm not telling N that I'm cold.

At the thought of it, a fringe of pale green lichen spills from the tree's boughs and dribbles over me, crafting a second cardigan oddly shaped in such a way as if to purposely resemble my old pink one. I test it, moving my arms, and it sticks with me, protecting from the breeze.

N comments. "If you were cold, you could have—"

I raise a hand. "I don't want your shirt."

His brow furrows. "Okay, Filloma." I ignore the wince in his tone.

The sun is falling to our backs. Soon we'll lose the light and our journey will grow that much more arduous to begin. But I must see that stubborn nerd one last time.

N shows me the way to the window he apparently opened in order to get to me faster. We have to rush past the wreckage of my testing facility, then he helps me up and into the gap to the Palace. He follows soon after, easily shimmying through the window—for a moment I wish I had a phone so I could steal a photo of him half in the building, his legs swimming in air.

Then it's down a long, empty hallway. There are no dukes out. Perhaps they're praying or something about the sins of hurting me. That last duke we had spoken with had been so afraid of even touching me. Apparently Ghetsis didn't even rescind the rule after I escaped. I don't know how I should feel about that.

At the end of the hallway, there's another turn, and then—a pair of steel doors. N moves to my side and knocks politely. There is no response. I roll my eyes and kick the door—it faintly moves off its hinges, allowing us entry.

"He didn't bother to lock it," I inform N. "He never did."

We go inside. The lights are off, and there are no windows. Only a true hermit to the likes of the man we're searching for could withstand such a fluorescent headache.

"Colress," I call out, "we're leaving soon. Where are you?"

No reply, but I catch the scree of a door on its poorly-tended hinges.

"Colress," I try again, pretending that my voice did not waver.

The flicker of a flashlight. Glasses flashing in the shadows.

Carefully the light is trained onto our feet, so as not to blind us. In the burn of the light I can vaguely make out his labcoat, his angular form.

He stays some few feet away from us, then says quietly, "So it worked."

"Yes."

"I had a feeling your newer, bigger cage was not built to withstand elements other than your own. More cost-effective, and all. The blasted bird apparently requires all the funds he can get. I haven't seen him for weeks."

"Weeks," I utter. N moves as if to pipe up and Colress shushes him.

"Yes, weeks. I told the dukes that he mandated they test your powers and would not count it as hurting you so long as they did not kill you. A very easy bunch to fool, they are. Now I am going to tell Ghetsis—if the man ever returns—that they acted without my permission. Who is he going to listen to? We shall find out then."

"G-Goodness, Colress," I mutter, "what about your own self-preser—"

"These hands have caused all that could be desired. I am tired."

I cannot stop myself from saying it. "So you just sit around in the dark all day now?"

"Yes, precisely. And I sleep a great deal, something I've overlooked for however many years." A hand fidgets to his glasses; he murmurs, "I wasted years of my life on malforming a poor girl's very existence. Then months on perfecting the process of binding pokemon powers to human bodies. Then years on..." He hovers, pausing. The eyes within his glasses are roving—caged animals. Caged pokemon. "You are going to the Dragonspiral Tower, are you not? I hope you find the answers you've been seeking, Filloma. And look out, if you unearth Ghetsis. Our last trial involved perfecting a means of reversing your condition. I do not know what it is you desire, but I hope you discover it before he locates you.

"And, Natural—I advise you do not keep stepping on her toes."

"I did not plan to," he mutters.

"Thank you, Colress," I say, and I reach out to him, and he moves back, swallowed up within his own darkened chambers.

The flashlight flickers off; I catch a glimpse of his voice one last time, lingering for just moments before his presence deserts us:

"I wish I could say I am sorry."

And something sails through the air that I instinctively catch. A poke ball. A poke ball with an elgyem inside.

All I can think of as we leave is how terrible those last words are.


End file.
